The lonely nights of a Capitol slave
by the wistful mouse
Summary: A series of one-shots about Finnick at various stages of his life. Rated T for Games flashbacks/sexual suggestions. CHAPTER SIX: A client's loose tongue causes Finnick to muse about parenthood
1. Far away from home

**Hello there. This here is a one-shot about one of my favourite characters, Finnick Odair. Set when he is 16, and being sold by President Snow. I don't usually write in present tense or first person, so I apologise if there are any grammatical mistakes. Enjoy, and please review :)**

* * *

><p>The beast looms above me: a silhouette, black and hulking and monstrous, with its hunched back and thick, fleshy swell of muscle highlighted against the gentle moonlight. The only part of the figure which betrays its humanity are the heavy hands which clutch the hilt of the figure's weapon like it's the only thing the tribute has in the whole world. It probably is.<p>

The smooth, elegant spire of metal sprawling high above me shines bright silver, and I can't help but be reminded of the masts of fishing boats moored back home. Only their surface isn't tainted with blood. It's a crimson drip from the smeared sword, smashing, revoltingly wet and warm, onto my lips that brings me to my senses, and jolts me out of the terror which encapsulates me like the icy stabbing sensation of drowning in frozen water.

I leap to the side, and feel the cool whistle of air against the back of my neck, starting at the powerful thud as the sword buries itself in the thick mud I had lay in just a moment ago. The tribute's furious, ape-like scream as his weapon misses its mark makes me flinch. I feel the sword soar into the air above me, ready to take my life. I feel his cloth, burial clothes, underneath my skin as I grab at him desperately, my other hand guiding my trident to victory. I feel the sickening warmth gush over my hands, my wrists, as the soft flesh of a nameless tribute yields to the lethal points of what is an extension of my own arm.

Three razor sharp points against one, hardly seems fair. There's an ancient phrase which my grandfather told me: alls fair in love and war. But this fatal hold this tribute and I are locked in is neither; this is part of a game, one of pure, pointless murder.

Something strange happens. The dark stream of blood winding round my calloused fingers quickly becomes a scarlet river, and when I look down I realise I am standing in a torrent of lucid warmth, red liquid slipping through my clothes, burning every inch of the skin beneath my waist. The current becomes stronger, and though I fight, planting my feet (which have been ripped from their solid, protective boots) firmly into the mud, I soon feel my grip on earth torn from me, and I crash into the waves.

A great, unnatural cloud has smothered the moonlight, and I am plunged into a blind darkness as hot, slippery liquid surges into my mouth. I retch, desperately flailing my arms to keep myself from being swept away, sucked into the impenetrable blackness. My hands catch something large and soft, and I realise with horror that the corpse of the innocent boy whom I had just killed is being shoved into me by the current, his weight forcing me under, trying to avenge his own death. I push at him, try to swim away so the body can pass by me, but his lifeless limbs, already rotting away, fold around me in a deathly cold embrace.

Every part of my being thrashes desperately to get away, to escape from this living hell, but I am helpless, dragged by the current of a flood which I created. My senses are assailed by the stench of something horrifyingly familiar, like from an ancient nightmare: the mutant mixture of roses and blood. Deep booms echo all around me, shake me to the core, so loud I can almost feel the cold, metal nose of the cannon on my neck. I feel the icy smoothness and sharp angles of the boy's skeleton digging into my skin, puncturing my flesh, as his dead weight forces my face closer to the pulsing throb of the river. I splutter as my lungs violently react to the fresh blood, which slides revoltingly down my throat, leaving behind it a thick slime which reminds me of slug trails, and I feel my chest tighten as less and less air breezes through my lungs at every breath…

I am suddenly thrust back into my body, and I realise only with a little relief that it was just a nightmare. Because it had started off as a flashback. Because the nightmares never truly end, even when I'm awake.

Feeling vulnerable lying on my back, I rise so I'm leaning up on my elbows as the fogginess of sleep fades from my mind and I try to gather my bearings. I never realised how much I appreciated being in the same place, waking up in my own room, with the familiar shapes of my desk and wardrobe and clothes (that I could never quite be bothered to put away) to greet me. Because for the past few weeks I had dragged myself from fitful sleep, hungry for comfort, something to tether me to this earth, and have found only unfamiliar forms, too many shadows, the touch of a stranger's plump, perverse limbs clanking with jewellery.

This morning (though by the blinding, pointed numbers on the clock I see its closer to night), I find myself in a room almost as large as my old home all those miles away, with sequins smothering every inch of shocking pink wall which isn't already coated with photos, slapped on like tiles from the floor to the ceiling. Some are of Capitol people, odd creatures with rainbow skin, hair and clothes, each with some grotesque or simply ridiculous 'beauty feature'. Men with a piercing gouging every available cell of skin, women with caricature bodies, children grinning with dimples stapled with cat whiskers.

But mostly the faces of mentors, escorts, stylists, and of course tributes have been chopped meticulously from magazines and tacked to the wall. Murderers and their assistants; interesting choice of decoration. I spot my own eyes staring back at me several times, and feel watched, surrounded. I wonder if it bothers the owner of this room that every action is being judged by the unforgiving gaze of skeletal children who have been brutally murdered.

Speaking of which, I glance at the woman (whose name escapes me) sprawled beside me, face buried in the rich fabric covering the bed, which spans the width of the room. I will never understand why people in the Capitol feel the need to own such large beds. It's not like they need it, even where the people I…see have husbands or lovers, it always crosses my mind how at least four could fit easily in a bed only used by two. But that is the Capitol all over. Wasteful, greedy, ungrateful, unthinking.

I suddenly find the air in the room stifling, the heat pumping through ugly radiators in the corner so distant from the cool breezes that constantly drifted through the modest house I used to share with my parents. The presence of the woman, sharing the odd colours, distinctive features and ignorant curiosity that I saw in the brightly plumed birds wandering the fields in my games, troubles me. The sound of her snuffled snorts makes me jump, and the sight of her hands makes my skin crawl as I remember how those same hands had travelled over me in darkness bathed in pink, the blood red nails – more like claws – pricking the golden surface of my skin. That night, as always, hot and frenzied and messy and frightening, just like the bloodbath at the Cornucopia.

And like the Cornucopia, I know that I have to grab what I need and get out of here as quickly as I can. So I throw off the silken sheets and leap off the bed, whipping round, alarmed, when the woman moans. I stand, still as a corpse, glaring at her bare body striped with luminous orange, and praying she won't wake up. I really can't handle having to tug on my camera face, spit out stupid jokes and empty laughs. Flirt though I feel disgusted at their manufactured eyes, dark and sparkling with lust. Match their smiles, theirs so large I worry they'll try to swallow me whole. Resort to grabbing onto something to restrain myself from the instinctive reaction to back away from these creatures who inch closer, like predators which have cornered their prey to mercilessly devour it.

Thankfully, the woman remains asleep as she heaves her body over so she is facing me, her arm landing over the empty space I had just occupied, as if a subconscious part of her wants to seize me and trap me in her grasp. Satisfied she hasn't woken up, I gather my clothes, flung carelessly round the bed, and slip into them, then turn and hurry towards long, velvet curtains through which I can see the light of a promising expanse of window. My suspicions are proved correct when I pull back the heavy, plum fabric to reveal two glass doors lying between my prison and a balcony, which appears to be made of wooden planks, but on closer inspection it is too bright, too perfect, too fresh to be anything from nature.

The room I am in is coated in a dim glow, but as soon as I open the curtains the place is flooded with the electric luminescence of the city, that cold brightness which impales your eyes from every direction: decorative studs embedded on the pavement; lamps posted like guards in strict formation every few metres; flamboyant, opulent structures sitting atop of buildings like vultures upon a dead branch. My glance snaps back to the woman, worried the light might have roused her from her slumber, but she hasn't stirred. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, I know from experience that people in the Capitol are very good at sleeping: they can fall into a such a deep unconsciousness you'd swear they were in a coma, and stay there until way after the day has broken. Not an earthquake could stir them. And they must be used to the endless brightness, in this world where night is day, where they oppose nature by taunting the night stars with millions of their own unsightly little yellow bulbs, in order to satisfy their bizarre ways.

As I fumble for an exasperatingly long time with the latch, I wonder what has become of my fingers, once so nimble with the joints flexed by years of working with finicky knots, hands recently used to make strangers scream, to the symphony of cannon-fire, or to the whine of a silly high-pitched Capitol accent. I'm near smashing the damn glass by the time I manage to finally loosen the golden latch and push the doors open, my joints aching and blood pooling round my nails, which are perfect now I've been threatened by my prep team to never bite them again.

I stumble out gratefully, wiping my hands on my trousers, which mould constrictively around my legs, making me feel uncomfortable as I realise how much I want to have a shower, or heck, I'll settle for sprinting around in the rain, just to wash away the sticky, sweaty layer that coats my skin like filthy grime from the pits of the coal mines in Twelve. Like always, I feel so…unclean, impure. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I could peel off this shell, so that people would not think I was so beautiful, so I would not have to feel so disgusted with the skin I am forced to wear.

I stand there, leaning against the balcony railing with my eyes closed, trying to block out the incessant thump of music rattling the windows a few houses down the street, and the impatient blare of horns slicing the air from the road far down below. The cool wind, blowing gently against my uncovered arms, causes lines of goose bumps to form, but I find the breeze peaceful, refreshing, and I relish the opportunity to capture a rare moment immersed in nature within this artificial jail block.

I allow myself to forget the people, who are barely people at all, who press in all around me, and make myself believe that for a second, I am all alone on the beach at home, safe, with my family and my friends, and surrounded by those things which I always took for granted, but which in the Games I had longed for more than life itself. The crash of waves, the sky alive with stars, the feeling of belonging, of knowing and being proud of exactly who and what I am.

Then I open my eyes and remember that I'm trapped in a stranger's house miles and miles away from my own, obligating to repugnant midnight rituals just so that there still is a home when I get back.

Not for the first time, I wish I was dead, eased from life by a weapon too large for the desperate yet unwilling hands which grasp it. But some undulating force, like the hazy horizon sliced by the fierce waves of the sea, stops me from tipping myself from this balcony, unburdened by the sharp barrier of a force field. It's the hope that someday my life will have purpose, that I will one day be able to look in the mirror without fear or shame or disgust, that one day I'll be safe from the Hunger Games forever.

I have the feeling I will be waiting a long time for that day.


	2. The mentor who needs mentoring

**Hello chums. So initially I intended this story to be just one one-shot, but I seem to have developed a (rather unhealthy) obsession with Finnick, so I have decided to collect whatever one-shots I write about him here. **

**This chapter is set six years after his Games, a year after Annie Cresta's becoming a Victor. It focuses on him reminiscing on how he copes with the Games and with mentoring for the first time. Though at the end there is the indication of the development of romantic feelings, this one-shot is about Finnick and Annie's relationship as mentor and mentee, not anything more. They're still cute, though ^_^**

**As always with my writing (if you ever feel like being depressed check out my stories ;D), this is angsty and not much happens, but I did kind of manage a happy ending :) It isn't great, but oh well, enjoy :P**

* * *

><p>I gaze out of the vast window, but in the hour I have sat here, it remains as sturdy as ever, no matter how hard I stare at the thick, rainbow tinted glass, willing with every cell of my body that I can pass through those so innocent seeming, beautiful windows which keep me prisoner in their blinding, unnatural light.<p>

It seems stupid when that pervasive, puncturing feeling has been translated into cold, simple words, but there are days when I cannot bring myself to think of anything else. I am not truly trapped, in fact I am in what should be the safest place in the world for me, in my own district and my home with my family and those I love close by. But that is just it, which fills me to the brim with dread and encapsulates me like water in a torrent too fast for the most experienced swimmer. That feeling of dread that hangs over me, the feeling that I am never truly safe, even when my mind tells me I am. The uncertainty, when I know I can no longer trust myself, because I never know whether I am being paranoid or whether I truly should be afraid. The empty apathy I feel for this house which I must call my home because some despicable strangers tell me I must, though to me it's too large, too cold, too hollow. It is so soulless right down to its perfect, iridescent glass that I'm convinced they're trying to mirror the nature of the creatures to whom the house, and I, truly belong, and acts as a cruel reminder of what I have lost.

Because when I came back from the Games, I expected everything to go back to normal. I hoped, like the naive young boy I was, fleshed out by misplaced pride and dizzy from the blind, crazed adoration of the Capitol people, that I could bury myself in the normality of my life, that the warm familiarity, that true balance of relaxation and comfort only coaxed out of the hardest shell by the feeling of belonging, could allow me to forget, to allow that unwanted part of me to float away forever. But, whether it was the subtle yet inflicting change within me, those images which I had seen which I can never burn from my memory which smoulder like a crimson film over my eyes, or whether it was the conspicuous difference my district people, my friends, my family acted and looked towards me, I will never know. All I know, the only truth which I have to grasp onto, is that things are not the same, probably never will be, and I cannot forget that I am a heartless monster. And sometimes I wake up, scrubbing till my fingers are pink and raw at my fingernails because I am convinced the blood of those five people I killed, those innocent victims whose precious, irreplaceable lives I selfishly stole to save my own worthless skin, is still wedged underneath them.

So, here I am, Finnick Odair, nineteen years old, free to get away with murder and countless corruption, yet a prisoner to enjoy any of my 'victory's' dirty pleasures because of my own guilt, locked in the shame and fear-ridden gaze of my people's sunken-in eyes. So often I feel like a fireball about to erupt because I have so much anger and sadness and disgust and guilt that has built up inside my spoiled body like a venomous, fatal poison, and there is no place, no person, no way I can truly free myself of these because there is always the Capitol, my memories, the threats, and the omnipresent, invasive feeling of a camera focussing its frosty, unseeing eye on me.

And there is no place, apart from the Capitol city itself, that stirs this feeling in me more than this heap of glorified bricks and mortar that I refuse to call home, even nearly six years after my unwilling welcome into the hallowed Victor's village. My mother and father were glad to move in surrounded by the unfamiliar luxury and grandeur that previously had only appeared to them in their wildest dreams, after our simple life in the meagre house we had before, with only our ancient knickknacks to brighten the misery of poverty, which now seem pathetic placed beside expensive, elaborate paintings and statues in our new mansion.

But that's because every polished wall, every ostentatious item, every unnecessarily ornate carving doesn't remind them of a place filled with horror and humiliation, where you are forced to smile and prance around like a deranged puppet at displays so abhorrent, so detached from the moral values woven into the fabric of my cells that I wonder if those creatures are truly human, whether, if they could see how those live who provide them with everything: their food, their warmth, their entertainment, would they too be revolted by their unimaginable attitudes and actions? Does anyone there ever question the overpowering, chaotic, detrimental ethos which fuels the city's many bars and nightclubs and businesses, flickers through every Capitol citizen till they are unrecognisable, like unthinking animals unleashed from the reigns of civility and morals: the thought that anything goes as long as you have fun doing it?

At first, when I heard an intoxicated couple, the forty-three year old man leering over a giggling girl who looked about fourteen, tell me this, so offhand and with perverted grins which disturbed me for weeks, I didn't truly believe people would live like that, cast off so easily everything that made their shallow, self-centred selves barely decent just for hazy nights bubbled to the brim with gaining every kind of human pleasure. But then I remembered that these were the same people – creatures – who found it perfectly acceptable to watch, to celebrate the murder of defenceless children, so long as they found it entertaining. And how I, a tortured, lonely sixteen year old, was sold to be used as just another toy for these adults with the minds and souls of ignorant children to play with.

Needless to say, I like to get out of the house whenever I can. Unfortunately, this is one of the days where my memories overcome me, when I feel I will drown in the blood that I have spilled, when I feel so rotten inside from the things they have made me do that I want to scrape everything out, begin pure, fresh, anew. I long to be as I am in those worn photos of my much younger self, which I wish my mother had not displayed in her new fancy photo frames because I find myself staring so enviously it mutates into a hideous hatred of my unspoiled years which I had wasted never appreciating, which I can never get back, no matter how much money those despicable women throw at me.

This has been one of those days when I can no longer allow those feelings, burning inside me like a leaden weight, always there but painfully repressed, to remain in the hastily and shabbily built coffin in my mind, but overcome me, numb me and destroy me to my core. I don't feel like doing anything but sitting by my window allowing hot, gripping tears to roll down my cheeks, like a sorrowful dedication to the ocean waves and the glinting beaches, which usually allow me to immerse myself in their gentle soothing solace, but cannot comfort me now in the dark and bitter depths of the victor's disease. Even my family, who now know my easiness can be replaced by depression as quick as a knife, have slipped out into the bustling, chattering marketplace and have lingered as long as possible, maybe will stay the night with friends, because they know that their presence does nothing but add to the guilt which piles up like so many fleshy fish in the tight net which promises their death.

But there is always a time where the sadness ebbs, the bitterness mellows, the guilt becomes manageable, and I can just live with myself again. It is a time of relief, when I feel the chains that constrict my chest unwind so that I can breathe and not collapse with the crippling weight of the mess which is my life. But there is always some feeling of regret, an awareness of a spiteful whisper inside of me which tells me I deserve to feel that way, that I was the one who killed those people, who was too weak to protect those I love but to offer my pathetic body to those who I hate most, I who became the shameful shell of a person I was, a disgrace to my district, to my family, to myself. As much as I try to remind (convince) myself that none of that was really my fault, that I was and am under the command of a powerful force no one can overcome, sometimes I still feel that I have got off lightly with my respites at home, free from this stupor which plagues my living life and my dreaming nights, and that really I deserve to be punished for eternity for what I have done. The selfish part of me, the one that won those Games and which aches for normality to reign again, always wins in the end, though.

And that is why I am alone in this desperately large and lonely mansion, with only tear tracks tracing desolate valleys into the hatefully perfect plane of my face as a mark of the day's achievements. I stand rather futilely in the centre of my room, gazing round with eyes which echo the misery which takes some time to fully cloud over, uninspired for an activity to fill the time with now I am done moping. I eventually decide to take a shower, not that I need one as I had one this morning, but I have always found the warm droplets, like gentle bullets beating into my vulnerably naked form, strangely comforting.

...

After my shower, which I still marvel at for the instant, constant warmth, something so ordinary and taken for granted, yet an impossible luxury in the life I used to live, I wander round my room slowly drying my hair with a fluffy white towel, lost in thought, wearing only a towel wrapped round my waist. I wouldn't usually even bother about that, seeing as I'm in my house alone, and besides, there isn't much the whole country hasn't seen, but Mags has developed this habit of just bursting into my house without warning with that silent, bumbling tread of hers, and I haven't quite reached low enough that I'd go round traumatising old women. Not that she would particularly care if she did walk in on me, she is one of those wonderful people who drift through life not letting silly little things such as unexpectedly seeing your mentee naked disturb the flow; she takes everything: every setback, every trial, every disappointment right into her stride with a lovable nonchalance.

Mags means so much to me, being the woman who saw me through the very worst time of my life, whose gifts kept my spirits up, whose advice convinced me that I was so much more than just a tribute destined to die in the first hour. To be honest, after the Games I had half expected her to forget about me, to never really see her again except in passing doddering about in Victory Square and in town haggling furiously with the market vendors. But I had underestimated the bond, the unbreakable link between us, which drew her to my house and I to hers tugged by some kind of psychic familial understanding of when one needed the other. I was so very eternally grateful to have her there when I first got back, empty and leaden with guilt, from the Games, and when I shakily stumbled onto that death train once again to sell what I wasn't even sure I knew what I was giving.

I think it upsets my mother sometimes to see me crying onto Mags' shoulder, curled into her patting hand, cratered with the landmarks of age; pouring out my every worry and joy into her patient, unprejudiced ears instead of my own mother's, and it is true that I now see my mentor more as a surrogate grandmother who shines in the shadow of my own long-dead one. But the truth is, as hard as Mother and Father try, they can never comfort me fully: only a victor knows that words like 'safe' and 'alright', and empty reassurances are nothing to someone who has the ghosts of five people stroking their spines constantly, who has the Capitol's passionate and obsessive love. They do not understand that the touch of someone who likes me for who I am, of someone who sees through my eyes and can emphasise with the pain of the life of the victorious, the gentle strokes of an aged thumb and my name whispered as a sorrowful garble by a woman I have only spoken to through the breeze of a silver parachute, can raise me out of anything more than the most impassioned soliloquy and plea from those who I have lived with and loved my whole life.

And so Mags became an additional member of the family, the slightly eccentric and barely comprehensible but still lovable old relative joining us for dinner, helping to gut the fish my father brings home – he insisted on remaining working, refusing to live off his son despite my protests that I have nothing in the world I would want, or need, to spend all of this useless, bloodied money on anyway. I can only hope to be an as dedicated and caring mentor as she is to me.

The mentor from 12, Haymitch, bitterly slurred to me once that "Once you've seen as many tributes die as I have, boy, you won't be able to bring yourself to care anymore". The thought had haunted me for my first time of mentoring a year ago. It is one thing to feel you have failed your tributes, another to know that you can't even seek comfort by telling yourself you did the best you could, and you can only find hope in the cool touch of a bottle. So it was relieving and inspirational to see that Mags, after her 63 years of mentoring, was still so wonderful at it. Of course, since District 4 is officially a Career district, Mags hadn't had to actually mentor every one of those years, since there have always been the others to take her place, plus there was another mentor to support her, and there was two incidences, including mine, in which she had mentored the victor, unlike poor Haymitch, who had to endure the torture alone year after year of pouring your whole heart into keeping alive those who are doomed from the start. Though I knew I should be supporting my own tributes, sometimes when I sat at the mentoring station I caught his weary, bloodshot eyes alternating equally desperate and defeated looks at the bottle glued into his hand and the screens showcasing his tributes, and I would pray those poor District 12 tributes would win, if only to scrape that lonely soul from the pits of his suffering.

Suddenly, as I lose myself in the view outside: large, puffy clouds, cream with a gentle border of muted orange painted by the looming sunset which peers self-consciously from the faded edges of the white forms, I see a dark form flash in the corner of my vision. My eyes dart to the darkening green grass of the garden with its flawless path embedded with tiny brown stones, where I just catch a glimpse of a slim figure, silhouetted and faded by the dwindling light and the shadow of the great house, before it disappears beneath the white planks of the porch roof.

Without realising it, terror has already filled me. The thought of this shady stranger being near this place which is my domain, and my ignorance to who and why they are here threatens to drive me crazy. I try to be rational, to calm myself down. I am only being paranoid because of the Games, it's probably just one of my parents coming back, or Mags, or even one of my old friends from the docks whose sole entertainment on the long hours out on the fishing boats is to play tricks on people. I hear what sounds like a feeble knock. See, I tell myself relieved, as I pull on some trousers, it is just a visitor, maybe one the family friends who always seemed to crowd our small house when I got home from school as I was younger – Mother and Father are very sociable, the kind of people who somehow know everyone and every event in their lives.

My rational thoughts tumble out of my brain and panic instantly pumps through my veins when the knocks descend into desperate clawing at the door handle, and the front door creaks open with a bang against the wall which makes me jump. Adrenaline has tingles jolting through my toes and my fingertips, which ache for the hideously familiar feeling of my trident, and my fear intensifies to a wild thumping in my chest as I can make out strange whimpers and snuffles almost unheard underneath the sound of awkward, fumbling footsteps making quick progress through the darkened house, up the first stairs…

This is no one I know, this is no Mags, whose approaches are calm and silent, no Mother, whose busy, lively footsteps are light and usually accompanied by her bright voice singing or talking to anything which will listen (even inanimate objects) no Father with his slow, measured booted tread. This sounds like no friend or acquaintance I have ever met. It barely sounds human, those sounds are so pitiful, like a dog whining for comfort in a thunderstorm, the movements light but somehow crazed and desperate and confused. I can hear the muffled thumps as a small body crashes into the walls and the squeaks as clammy hands slide on the banister over and over.

Each noise slices through me like a knife, and I position myself beside the bedroom door, the nearest heavy object I can find – a box decorated with seashells – clutched in my slightly shaking arm. My bedroom is the one lit room in this cold, dark empty house, and that's where the creature is approaching determinedly in its odd, fluttery way, like a moth fatally attracted to candlelight. I can hear soft footsteps on the other side of the wall, the ragged breath which seems to be punctuated with poorly formed words…

The light from my candle (I actively refuse to use the Capitol's fancy lamps, reverting to the traditional method used in a district often experiencing power shortages) suddenly throws into alarming distinction the creature which has broken into my home to hunt me down, to kill me like those monsters in my Games tried to. The first thing I notice, with only little relief, from the flecks of flesh orange in the candlelight, is that the creature framed in the doorway is human, not the twisted face of the muttations my hyperactive imagination had thrown at me.

Green eyes, deep and dark and pained, peering out from the darkness like the wide orbs of a cat in a moonlit window meet mine, and I just have time to throw down the box, still raised defensively in my hand, before my name is gasped by a tiny voice thick with tears, and the small, childlike body crashes into me, her bony arms constricting tightly round my waist like the sharp claws of a lobster fending off some fearsome predator, and she murmurs incomprehensively into my chest.

Swallowing the instinctual eruption of panic within me on being attacked like this, I tentatively reach my arms around her in an awkward embrace and put on my best caring mentor voice, one that sounds authoritative and wise and deceptively capable, like I hadn't been having a mini mental breakdown little under an hour ago. It doesn't matter about how I feel, she's depending on me and I have to be strong for her now.

"Annie? What happened?" I don't bother saying anything as empty and superfluous as asking if she is alright. I of all people know it's a stupid thing to ask a victor, because we all know, as much as we kid ourselves, that nothing will ever be alright again.

She stifles a sob, and I feel my skin dampen as her tear-streaked cheek meets my chest, and I feel her frail body tremble like a leaf being torn apart by the breeze. It takes a minute or two before she can force her lips to convert her pain into words. Finally, she raises her face and looks at me imploringly.

"They…they'll never go away, will they? The images, the sounds, the, the…"

She can't say anymore. I can see in her eyes, the far-away look that suggests her conscious is somewhere far away from here, inside a world that is entirely hers, that just talking about them brings them flooding back: the barrage of unwelcome memories ramming against her already battered brain. She whimpers, buries her face into the hollow of my neck and clutches me tight like I'm an anchor she's desperately grasping onto to fight against being dragged into the horror of her own mind by a torrent more powerful than any Capitol medicine.

An instinctual part of me, one that overrides my overwhelming pity and pain for this poor broken girl, knows that I could never lie to that face, those puffy, shiny bloodshot eyes, and skin blotched with pink and tears. I know that somewhere underneath those tears she is beautiful and pure and kind and never deserves the hateful art of lying which I see as one of the worst things a person can do, however better it will make her for the short-term, like a sweet, euphoric shot of morphling. So I simply whisper, with the sadness of someone admitting that which they foolishly but wishfully deny themselves "No".

Feeling the small body tense in my arms, I quickly say, in a more soothing voice, "But they'll get easier to handle with time, and you'll always have me and Mags and everyone else to help you" My attempt at pacifying her does not appear to have much effect, as she just leans against me, stiff and motionless but for shaking with silent tears, weakened and barely able to stand without the support of my arms, like her body has given up just as I can feel her mind slipping away. Her face hidden from me, all I can see the twisted mass of dark ebony curls that is her hair, which I reach up and stroke tentatively with my hand.

It's a comforting gesture which I personally have found to be one of the best things a person can do, and I know that right now Annie is at the point where a simple reassuring touch from someone trusted, someone understanding: the epitome of human sympathy and effective communication, is the sole way to anchor her mind. To we victors who have faced the very rawest of fears and explored the deepest of human cores have been thrust too far for the numbing effects of mere words and gestures which we no longer trust, we who were stripped to the bare clothing of our fundamental human instincts revert to the very basics of needs. But I feel uncomfortable and unsure of her reaction with an action which seems so intimate, especially with her age and fragility and the darkness and isolation heavy in this place, not even mentioning the fact we're in my bedroom and I'm only half-dressed.

It seems illogical, laughable to those who have seen me flaunting myself on camera shamelessly flirting and being less than gentlemanly with my intentions and actions. The Finnick Odair who is an arrogant womaniser with no boundaries is all a lie, a mask painted onto a beautiful face, the motions of my body unbidden and unconnected with my thoughts, and those women who see him beg for him, see nothing more appropriate or enjoyable, have been experienced in matters from a young age that were unknown to me until I was shoved into them at the deep end at sixteen. That is what they pay for, after all.

But whilst that mask is easily donned in that rainbow world where nothing is real and for creatures who want only that repugnant paint, so far away from the ordinary rules of society that I may as well be in a different world all together, in the civilised familiarity of my district, where what brings me victory there only brings shame, is where the old, the real Finnick is freed and hesitantly tries to shadow his alter ego, like a toddler trying to copy the actions of his father. Hence, something so easily, thoughtlessly done to the parched, gelled, rough hair so bright it hurts my eyes to look at, becomes a challenging step, an act to be thought out and considered to the wind-blown, natural strands encrusted with sea salt.

This hesitation, found with anyone, even my friends, becomes intensified because of the particular girl I find myself with. When I was chosen to become the mentor for the 70th Hunger Games, Mags insisted on being the partner mentor, so she could show me the ropes. This meant she did a lot of the work, showing through example the type of information I should give, when to provide particular advice, but sixteen year old Annie Cresta was still my personal responsibility as my assigned mentee. And she is significant to me, being the first dependant life placed in my terrified hands, the girl I gave everything to – punishing my brain to think of strategies and advice, sleepless hours in the control room scared that something would happen the moment I let myself rest, selling my soul to the more sympathetic of sponsors to gain their support – in my first partly selfless act to keep a stranger alive, my first success at a job I was still not sure I was competent at yet.

Added to that, she is someone who I think, without the stilted titles of mentor and mentee shoved between us, would be my friend, or I'd like her to be, with a gentle compassion and kindness behind a crippling but adorable shyness, and beneath it all a strength, a determination to survive which made all the other things seem even more impressive.

But from the moment we arrived back from her Games, she had retreated into herself and her nightmares, this looking glass of horrors that she had created in her eyes. Though Mags and I had tried our best to ease her flow into the painful and public life of a victor: helping her move into her house, making friends with her very submissive and shy mother and tiny brother, intruding in the hope she would respond, Annie was apathetic to our presence, barely speaking and shrugging non-committed at any suggestions and inquiries we made. Over this past year I've felt so helpless and inexperienced, trudging back from her broken form every other day dejected, convinced I'd failed her as a mentor, as much as Mags has tried to console me.

Even on her Victory Tour, she simply spat our her speech with no emotion on her face except the endless sadness in those eyes which prevented anyone, not even our tactless, interfering escort, from lecturing her about 'presentation' and how her refusal to smile or add any personal notes was probably showing a lack of respect for the dead. Afterwards, she would shuffle on auto onto the train, barely blinking at the blinding lights of the cameras, and lock herself in her room, occasionally showing up to silently pick at a meal after I nearly demolished her door banging on it to get her to come out.

Consequently, Mags and I decided after the Victory Tour to ditch the intrusive approach and leave her alone to cope with the Games in her own way, and hope that she'd come to us if and when she needs to. We still come to see her, of course, but much less, though I can never tell whether she is better or worse for it. We mostly just find her the same way, either sitting staring into space or mindlessly doing everyday tasks like brushing her teeth if only to please her despairing mother.

So I can only ever see Annie as the girl entrusted to me, in a position of authority and mentorship only, not as any more, and to break that would be crossing a terrible boundary. Hence, I had not shared any meaningful or tender moments with her, nor did I have any intention to, and in fact this was the first time since we met almost a year ago at the Reaping that she had sought me out as anything other than a teacher to give advice. As such, given that I have never been exceptionally good at comforting people, I find this moment rather awkward as I'm not entirely sure what to do, and having spent no time with girls that requires dealing with any emotion other than euphoria, I have no idea how to look after this unpredictable, unstable, fragile girl when I haven't seen how or who she responds to. Though it seems natural and the only thing I can think of to hold her whilst she obviously wants someone to, I can't help but wonder if this is entirely appropriate and I ought to back away, or whether she would benefit from more affection.

Torn between what my upbringing and instincts and morals scream at me, and my desperation to be of some use as a mentor, we simply remain in that position for minutes, hours, I'm not sure, time seems suspended in a strange delirium between slow and fast – maybe this is how time feels for Annie, perhaps for her the months have flown by in a few blinks, propelled by the flames of memories and nightmares.

...

Eventually, her body begins to relax in my arms, her violent sobs and whimpers fade to sniffles and sighs, and her grip on me gradually loosens until I feel her take a deep breath and pull away from me, looking a little sheepish and embarrassed, scrubbing the tears from her face. I grin internally as I notice her eyes widen as she takes in my bare chest and blushes almost imperceptibly. I realise then that a long time must have elapsed because, whilst I could see her quite clearly before, now I can barely make out the features of her face in the dwindling spark of candlelight that lingers in a pool of melted wax.

"Sorry. I-I shouldn't have bothered you like that. You probably think I'm pathetic. I just-um, sorry" she stammers, shame and mortification illuminating her features. She turns on her heel and practically runs for the door. She is an odd one, all right, but she's my mentee and it's my solemn pledge to make her…less odd, and if that's going to happen I must reinforce what Mags and I have been telling her all year, that we are here for her whenever she needs us. So I catch her hand and pull her back, bending down so my face is at her level, and gently hold her shoulders.

"Annie, don't apologise. Listen, you may be out of the arena" she flinches at the word as if I have hit her, but I press on, determined now that she is actually listening that she will hear everything I have to say "but you're still in the Games, just as all of us Victors are. And that means I'm still your mentor, for as long as you want me, and I'll still do whatever it takes for you to survive, including giving you a shoulder to cry on. Do you understand?"

The girl just stares at me with eyes which remind me so much of the ocean: green and endless, perpetually lost somewhere in the horizon, and whirling with the torrents of something wonderful and murderous at the same time. She seems a little startled by my sudden intensity, and simply nods.

"And I could never think of you as pathetic. We all struggle sometimes, but it'll get better, I promise" I continue, and she nods again, a small motion with a blank face. To the casual onlooker this had the air of a school pupil pretending to agree to whatever lecture their teacher has given whilst their eyes glazed over, but I can see a spark, the glimmer of a lighthouse far away in the ocean of her eyes, and I know that she is touched by my words, and that she understands. It occurs to me that this is the first proper conversation we have had in a long time, the first time since the Games she has been so alert and can draw herself from her terrifying entrapment in the never-ending relay of her Games to join the realm of the living, and I know that I had not just told a lie, if she has improved this much, one day she truly will be her normal self.

"Now," I say straightening up and releasing her, eager to maintain the professional, uninvolved air of a mentor, "I'd better get you back to your family. They'll be getting worried". She nods – I'll never know whether she is just truly a woman of few words or whether the experiences she has had have mutilated her into a mental Avox. I go over to my dresser and tug on a shirt, as I don't think I ought to add to Mrs Cresta's worries by her vulnerable teenage daughter turning up dishevelled on the doorstep with an infamous (albeit unwilling) playboy who has mysteriously lost half his outfit. But as I'm walking out of the door, assuming she will follow, I hear her tiny, wavering voice call out  
>"Finnick?"<p>

I turn to find her standing self-consciously in the middle of the room, not having moved an inch, her face crumpling and her arms wrapped round herself as if she might fall apart. I rush back in, alarmed at her sudden relapse.

Usually after one of my dark days I refuse company, getting uncharacteristically snappy with people if they disturb me even after the worst is over, but for this girl I have all the patience piled up inside of me from years of fishing when I was younger, tensely waiting for hours sometimes, with my trident held above the water for those familiar shimmering shapes to finally appear in the right place, unsuspecting and tasty. So instead of rolling my eyes and pulling her down the stairs as I would do to someone else disturbing my time, I go up to her and gently ask "What is it?"

She shudders and whispers so quietly I have to lean closer to hear her, in a voice that cracks just like the girl who it comes from is about to.  
>"The nightmares. They'll come, they always come"<p>

I sigh and put my arms around her again, preparing for another comfort session, wishing I could say that they'll one day disappear but knowing that I can't. Even Mags comes in sometimes, shadows cutting deep under her eyes, and mumbles that she has had a bad night, when her Games were years ago.

"I know"

"I always wake up screaming, and my mother doesn't know what to do, and it makes my brother cry, and I feel terrible because I know it's killing them but I can't stop them"

"I know" It's all I can do whilst we stand here in the darkness, holding each other, to comfort her in the knowledge that I know exactly what she is going through, to suffer all that pain yourself, and find it multiplied when you see your family's sympathising, helpless looks at you over the breakfast table. I'm guessing that's where my parents are right now, spending the night at someone else's home because they can't stand mine and their own pain anymore as they attempt to ignore the agitated creaking of floorboards as I wander aimlessly round the house drinking mug after mug of coffee sweetened from my personal box stuffed full of sugar cubes.

"I'd go somewhere else not to disturb them, but I can't sleep alone, I'm scared of…of…" her head thrashes from side to side as she stares around her at the shapes in the darkness where, for her, lurks monsters giggle in anticipation for when they can find their prey vulnerable, and tributes sharpen their weapons waiting to appear in every bony shadow of the trees outside, in every strange noise the heating system makes, waiting to avenge their death or to kill for fun as the dreadful Careers in Annie's Games did.

Then she stills, and I see, in the faint light of the spark that still glimmers in the pool of wax, a blush rise in her cheeks, and she avoids looking at me as she timidly suggests "I suppose…if someone where to just be there, that isn't someone I'd hurt, I could, well, maybe the nightmares would be less horrible"

I don't know what she's getting at until she finally looks up at me, an ashamed but timidly expectant look on her face.

"Oh" I didn't exactly expect this, but I suppose I did tell her that I'd do anything to help her only a few minutes ago. I suppose I should be thinking of the awkwardness since we are still practically strangers, or how I'm going to explain this to her mother, or how inappropriate this is and how I don't want her to think this as meaning anything more than as friends, but all I can remember is her young, innocent hopeful face, and how terrible the nightmares are, and I know that I will stop at nothing to prevent her going through that kind of pain.

I can see she feels awkward, so I try to think of a way I can do this whilst averting the weirdness of the situation. An idea comes to mind and, just as I sense her about to apologise and tell me to forget the idea, I let the hateful Capitol Finnick slip through (with alarming ease) and instantly an arrogant smirk tugs at my lips as if pulled by a puppeteer. I drawl in my best seductive voice

"Annie Cresta, you can sleep with me anytime you like"

The effect is instantaneous, like a balloon being popped at a funeral parlour, and, amidst the wild blush that sets her face on fire, I see, for the first time in a year, a tentative smile, stiff from non-use, creep across her features. Any discomfort has been blasted out of the room and replaced with the warm ease of friendship. As she shyly walks over to my bed, grumbling that I knew that wasn't what she meant, Annie turns and eyes me, the smile still glinting in her eyes though the rest of her face has been dragged down to her usual empty stare by the terror of what tonight's visions will bring.

"Are you sure I'm worthy?"

I blink at her in shock for a second, because the change, though unnoticeable to some, is incredible and makes the sad shell of a girl I had seen so far unrecognisable. Annie just made a joke, an amazing achievement for one who has suffered as she has. I suppose she has reached that point in grief and trauma and guilt where, in the great uphill struggle you meet the snow and ice which cuts you, and everything floods out (hence when she finally ran to me for comfort), but then you reach the wonderful peak where you can finally look upon where you have come from a point of rest and not suffering, and you can move onwards towards the easier slopes of home.

It has taken her longer than the rest of us, but I feel pride and happiness that she has finally got there, and with my own new found joviality, which pumps through my veins at the exhilaration at seeing my little victor overcome her troubles, I reply, letting the old Finnick slip back into place, with my own joke, making an extravagant gesture to my body.

"Well, obviously no one is, but you'll do"

I grin cheekily at her, and though she rolls her eyes a thin strand of pure happiness is traceable between us, and its one that I hope is never severed. It's been a long time since I was ever able to joke about my looks like this, so innocently and free of the knowledge of what my attractiveness has brought upon me, and it's all thanks to this girl who just sees me as a mentor, a friend to comfort her, rather than anything else. After my experiences, I've never thought I'd see the day I'd be glad when a woman invited me into bed, and I know this is so very different because for once I won't be expected to do anything but lie there and be me.

...

After having rung Mrs Cresta when Annie drifted off to sleep so she isn't panicking about her daughter's whereabouts, I am lying here more content than I ever have been, watching Annie's peaceful face. She asked me to open the curtains so it isn't dark, so luminous in the brilliant moonlight, and with the lull of a finally restful sleep, the radiance of her youth and beauty is breathtaking. The way my fingers thread through the dark strands of her hair, gently caressing the soft surface, now feels oddly natural. She subconsciously curls closer to me, nuzzling her face in my chest, and I smile in an easy way I thought I had lost forever.

When I was first told I had to mentor, I was petrified, because the thought of having someone dependant on me, needing me for their survival, placed upon me such a responsibility, and a role that I didn't believe I could cope with. After all, I was barely keeping myself from dropping off the edge of this cliff we Victors all precariously dangle from, and I thought that if I was dragging the weight of another my grip would fail and we would both fall into the abyss. But maybe the presence of a child that needs looking after does not mean extra weight that would drag me down, but another set of arms to keep my hold on the cliff stronger.

For some inexplicable reason, the tie between this girl and I, formed upon the simple action of my picking the shortest straw from another victor's hand, and threaded with her acceptance of my help to her as a mentor tonight, is one which keeps us both alive. We will get through this hard life of ours, together.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review for more sickeningly sweet endings ^_^<strong>


	3. Illegal love

**Bonjour. So today's offering is a look at how Finnick's Capitol duties put a strain on his and Annie's relationship (I'm beginning to think I'm a bit too obsessed, but Finnick's back-story really does fascinate me). ****Set when he is approximately 21 and she is 18.  
>I warn you now that I am an angsty writer with a non-existent love life, so my attempts at writing romance aren't very good in my opinion, and I don't feel this has been one of my best.<strong>

* * *

><p>My heart sinks when I glimpse the tiny, deserted train station of District Four, taking in the white blocks of cement that most buildings here are made of, desperately empty apart from a few swirling tendrils of sand picked up by the gentle sea breeze and wafted aimlessly down the cold metal train track. I wish I could be free to float about so weightlessly, so purposelessly as those grains of sand, to wander like the scudding clouds which linger defiantly in spite of the suns blistering waves, which puncture right through me after a month of the Capitol's comparatively mild temperature when I'm finally allowed to stumble off the train.<p>

I've been to the city for the Hunger Games, when most of us Victors are dragged to the place where our nightmares were born and which blinds our eyes with its luminescence even when we have left, either to mentor or to play our role in whichever despicable charade Snow has us caged in. The latter being my reason.

I turn and hold out my hand to Mags as she's about to painfully lower herself down the steep stairs from the train, but she, in a very typically Mags-like fashion bats it away, leaving my fingers stinging, squawking that "I'm old, not an invalid, Odair". Her face is stern and her voice is vicious, but I know that means nothing, and what she actually means is "Thanks for the offer, but I'm determined that for as long as possible I shall not look like a weakling in front of the Capitol". So I simply grin at her as she hobbles down, glaring at any Capitol attendant who dares try to even suggest she can't manage by herself, and snatches her case, which I had intended to carry for her, from my hand, muttering something which sounds like "patronising boy".

The other mentor, and the couple other Victors who came with us, darted off as soon as their feet touched the sandy surface of home; I can still see the clouds of dust risen and swirling by their rushed exit. Mags and I are the only ones standing at the station, just beyond the imposing electrified fence surrounding our district, which is actually little more than a large chunk of cement placed upon the dusty surface of the endless desert that marks the yawning space between Four and Two.

"Come back soon, Finny, darling" I turn to see a rose-haired woman with a shocking amount of blusher plastered on her cheeks, clad in the crimson suit of a Capitol attendant, leaning in what she probably thinks is a seductive way against the train doors and waggling her long, painted fingers at me. She looks so ridiculously over the top, so hideous with her wide, puffy lips drenched in red lipstick, so ignorant to my indifference to her, that I have to restrain myself from laughing out loud. Behind her, in the shadows thrown by the bright light of the sun outside, I see two other attendants giggling and waving at me with idiotically demure gestures. How I'm glad to finally be away from these despicable freaks, to be able to relax not having to pretend I can stand them in my sight.

"Well, of course I will, how could I resist?" The Capitol Finnick drawls, smiling cheekily and aiming a wink at the two young women behind her. It works every time, the small motion perfected to the intrinsic balance between being subtle, almost unnoticeable so as to keep them up for nights, wondering if it did actually happen, whether it was aimed at them, yet with devastating effect reminiscent of the game we kids used to play when we weren't working, where everyone brought a can from our food rations and we piled them all up on a wall and practised our spearing aim by trying to hit the pile. I always managed to topple them all down with the tiniest rock.

The blush flames through the attendant's faces like a wildfire, and I think one of the ones at the back has to steady herself on a table. I can't wait to get away from these creatures.

"Goodbye" The attendant next to the door says as she hands me my jacket which I had forgotten about – I don't care for the Capitol's outlandish fashion sense, and I know I'd never be so careless as to swan around in front of the starved, frail children lining the streets of my district whilst clothed in what would probably be two years of their wages. Her tone is surprisingly curt, and I realise she's probably jealous because the wink was directed at the others rather than her.

How many times have I wished these people could see those in my district, to show them how truly pathetic and petty they are. Do they not see themselves mirrored in children who have tantrums over not getting the smallest thing, despite their haughty, shallow claims they are mature and they can't believe the trivial wants of the young. I've always been alright with kids, like when I'm made to speak to the twelve-year-olds at the training centre and share my profound wisdom of the Games and how wonderful it is to win. But it's shocking how different a privileged upbringing can make people, and I have no patience for these creatures, the woman who is now needlessly pouting and huffing just because I closed one eye at some attendant who she'll probably call her best friend but stab her in the back at her first chance.

I almost want…no that's terrible. I can't think such awful thoughts about someone, even some pathetic Capitol girl, ever, not I who have vowed never to take death lightly, who can no longer joke about someone else's pain without feeling a wrenching stab of guilt chill my insides because I know how tremendously horrific the consequences are when mere, unthinking words become irrevocable blades of massacre.

I shove down the anger that's building inside of me, threatening to spew like a volcano pressured and heated under a month's agonising torture as a puppet, a slave, a mere glove beaten and stretched to fit any hand as long as it is encrusted with diamonds. I take the case from the attendant, letting our hands lightly brush and gazing into her eyes with a smouldering stare, like I can't bear to look away, and murmur my goodbye as if it's only for her. It sickens me how natural, how expert the art at deluding young, impressionable women has become, for as much as I can never see these dressed up mannequins as people, I know that I would punch into next week that guy at school who thinks he is god on earth and goes through as many girls as he can. In the disgusted looks shot at me by the person who was that guy in school, it never escapes me that I have unwillingly mutated into what I have most despised.

It instantly mollifies the fickle woman, and she giggles in a high pitched tone which almost deafens me, grasping my fingers before reluctantly stepping back into the train and slowly reaching out to press the door release button, her hungry eyes never leaving me. Which part of me, I am long past caring. I just know that the sweetest sight right now will be that train sliding away from my home, taking with it the overpowering sense of 'Capitol' which clings to me like a parasite digging into my flesh.

Well, that's not entirely true. Gone is the noose round my neck, the threat that hangs heavy if I dare think of her, accidentally shout her name rather than the ridiculous name of my buyer, half-forgotten under the layer of disgust I feel for them, for myself, which always buries me like soil piled upon a coffin. And so I can allow myself to long for the sight of my Annie, safe and sound and happy and back in my arms.

Hence, as soon as the door clicks shut I don't wait for the graceful gliding of the train, pulling out at an alarming speed, I turn instinctively for home. I catch Mags' fiendish smirk, disguising a desperately restrained burst of laughter which I can see fighting to escape from the shuddering jars of the old woman's frail body.

"You alright there, _Finny_?"

"Shut up" I shoot her the best death glare I possess, though I know I won't need it to convince her to drop it. If this were any normal situation, we were ordinary people, I was some fisherman whose admirer had gushingly called him a stupid nickname fashioned from her innocent crush on a guy she had spotted in the marketplace, Mags would have allowed her mirth to overcome her, would have teased me remorselessly with a label forever stencilled onto my body. But we are Victors, for whom every attempt at finding joy in the world is always tainted by the hateful Capitol, and she knows that she has had her fun, and to reiterate the stupid name any more would be to bring a reminder of my life as the Capitol's Finnick, of the shallow, idiotic women who use me to carry out their creepy, intrusive obsession with me.

"Come on then, I'm not getting any younger, you know. I have things to be getting on with, and you'll be wanting to get back to Annie" she tells me with a knowing smirk. I reach down and take her case and her cane, then lift her worryingly insignificant weight onto my back. District Four is a large district, with the train station being the opposite side from Victor's Village, and I have learnt from the previous times we have undergone the long venture back from that station without the car provided when the train boasts a newly crowned Victor, that as much as she puts up a strong front the walk takes it out of the elderly woman. Consequently, she now lets me carry her as soon as the train departs, though I think it's mostly to prevent me pulling out my hair fretting over her.

At the mention of Annie, I feel a spurt of energy. Usually, when I'm away in the Capitol I'll phone my mother the moment I find out I'm allowed to go home, and only part of it is fuelled by my desire to calm her and Father's worry over me. Mostly it's because I know she will pass on the news to Annie, who is hence always there, her dark hair a shining beacon waiting for me at the train station, reminding me of all the good in the world while I'm trapped in that metal, clanking hearse. It's what I look for, to anchor me to that place from which I have distanced myself through my shameful behaviour and submissively becoming the Capitol's toy.

It still surprises me, the shock, the disappointment that jolted through me like a lead weight, the emptiness I felt aching inside me like a black hole where my heart should be when I saw how unnaturally empty the station was. Did it always look so desolate, or is it only because I have become accustomed to it being brightened by the beauty of that girl who melts any surrounding into a blur of colour around her? It is even more of a shock because I should have anticipated it, seeing as I never got the chance to phone home. I had expected to be forced to remain a few days to complete my 'errands' after the official conclusion of the Games, as I often am, but I was released just minutes before the train embarked, so I couldn't expect Annie to know. I take this as a good thing, since I can now surprise her by appearing while she thinks I'll be gone for a few days.

At first, I made sure she was notified when I'd be getting back because the first time I was away on one of my spontaneous calls to the Capitol she had a relapse, blinding herself in a tornado of belief that I had left her forever. She was a girl who had come to rely upon the steady assurances and presence of her mentor, and who was haunted by a fear of those she loved being torn from her, and consequently my trips to the Capitol became a strain for both of us, because it meant she had to be strong and pull hard at the feeble threads holding her fragile mind together, at the very torturous time of being forced to relive the Games through another's eyes at the mandatory viewing, all without my presence, which seems the only medicine that can pull her out of that world she has lost herself within.

But now, she insists on knowing when I will get back not only because I am the guy who stops the nightmares dragging her down, but because somehow over time I have become that person who keeps her whole world spinning…as she is for me. Don't ask me for one pinpoint on the map of our lives which had inexplicably become intertwined, because there isn't one, there wasn't some day of revelation and declaration, it just seems that we have always been together, from the moment we met on the tribute train our hearts meshed together, twined by the strongest rope.

We've never given what we have a name, frightened by the impossibility of our love and how the Capitol will not be pleased to see me flaunting such words as 'girlfriend' in respect to a girl without tattooed skin. The closest we get is to refer to our situation as our 'relationship', a nice, safe word that suggests what we are yet at the same time can be used to mean any vague partnership, like a friendship, an alliance. Whilst in our district, we openly express our feelings for each other, holding hands as we walk down the crowded East Beach where the serious fishermen mingle with the bravest of swimmers, but we, nor any of those around us, ever gratify them with words, with labels.

Snow knows about us, of course, with his army of informers and cameras, and tolerates it so long as I pretend she doesn't exist whilst in the Capitol, and we know it'll be a slap in the face to him to exhibit our relationship by openly admitting it in a way that would allow the tiniest implication to spread to the city. I remember his stern warning whilst I sat feeling very out of place in his office, a sly smile on his face which, matched with his snake eyes, just makes any attempt to smile seem insincere and menacing. 'I trust you understand, Mr Odair, the importance that you maintain your image whilst in the Capitol. It is not my concern what your feelings are for Miss Cresta or for any District Four girl, so long as no one here knows about it, and it doesn't interfere in any way with your, ah, performance on the errands I send you on'

No, there is no official name for what we are, we just know that she will always wait for me if I call for her, and I will wait for her.

...

Upon reaching the Victor's Village and ensuring Mags is comfortably at her house, I walk into my own, intending to freshen up, to wash away the stench of their perfume which clings to my skin like a limpet to a rock, though the anticipation of seeing Annie, after being so far away and denying our love, kills me.

I call out, wondering why the door isn't locked since at this time in the middle of the week my parents are usually out, and am greeted by a strangely familiar babbling Capitol accent booming from the sitting room. I freeze, fearful, the intrusion of those suited men in my house before my Victory Tour flitting into my memory like a perverse butterfly with razor wings. I'm on the verge of slamming the door behind me and tearing down to the beach, I can't handle any more demands or acting, not after finally thinking I'm safe from it. But that's what the Capitol does, they feed you to the lions then pull you out like a flapping, gasping fish on a line, only to hold you, suspended above their arena, ready to cut the line and slam you back in whenever they feel like it.

That's when I hear the anthem blare out, and in the second of silence lingering after it, I relax. Someone's left the television on, and it's playing what always fills the endless hours between Games and dreaded announcements: Capitol news reports and Games replays. That's not always an odd occurrence in a Victor's home, though it's strange since I, the only one in this house who would reluctantly sidle over to it for the poor semblance of comfort, have not been here. I've switched on the television, something which makes everyone else flinch – I guess it's a habit of mine picked up in the Capitol where the television isn't an ugly unwanted presence thrust upon families to parade their suffering children on – in the nightmare-filled nights where the empty house with it's deep shadows weighs upon me and gives the fears fresh on the skin of my mind a convoy to awaken in my conscious. There's nothing interesting on there though, if anything it mutates my fear into anger, because the epitome of the Capitol glares at me through that bright screen: commentators laughing over their favourite deaths of the decade, citizens whining because of shortages or because some stupid party didn't go exactly as they planned (once a woman gave me a lengthy account of how she'd screamed at her parents because the cake they'd ordered for her sixteenth had iced pansies rather than the daffodils she'd demanded), pained Victors stiffly playing their part in the annual puppet show Snow presides over.

I decide I don't want to hear their stupid high-pitched screechy voices which cut through me like nails down a chalkboard, so, carefully closing the front door behind me, I rush down the corridor to the door partway down. It takes me a while to digest the sight before me.

On the cream sofa Annie shudders with sobs which occasionally escape into plaintive cries, her form huddled like a cat so small that her already tiny body resembles that of a young child, weak and vulnerable and broken. I think I hear my name crowed, drowned by the thick tears falling in waterfalls, but I know she hasn't seen me because her face is buried in the cushions, and her hand, drawn into a small fist, shields her face from the glare of the television, which battles viciously with the gentle afternoon sunlight pouring in from the tall windows. Some perverse excitement thrills through me as I think she must be here to feel closer to me. In our journey from mentor and mentee to…what we are now, our often unannounced presence in each other's homes has become second nature, and something our families take with an understanding acceptance.

To murmur her name is the only thing I can do, my body melted with pity and sympathy and guilt which gives way to annoyance – why did I have to leave her here all alone? It's all the Capitol's fault, why she's like this, why I couldn't be here for her. I practically run in and kneel on the floor in front of her. Knowing that I need to be slow and gentle, as she panics when people make sudden or harsh movements, especially in her vulnerable moods, I gently stroke her arm, letting her know in the most subtle way that I'm here before I intend to pull her hand away from her face.

I am struck by how different this crying fit is, however. Usually, Annie will lock herself in her own world so much she hears and feels and sees no one else around her, and it can take minutes of tapping her arm and saying her name over and over for the fog to lift and her not to see you as a vision of her mind. But now as soon as my fingertips meet the soft skin on her arm, she jumps up so fast for a second I'm terrified shes going to break her neck from the sharp turn of being facedown to staring at me with uncharacteristically clear, aware eyes. She holds my gaze for seconds which seem to tick by as if the clock hands are made of lead, like she's trying to decide whether I'm real or not.

Of course, I'm not supposed to be here yet, and she gets so easily confused. That's one of the reasons why I always phone ahead so that my appearance is expected and prepared for. I'm quick to reassure her, whilst resisting the urge to pounce on her with a kiss (it scares her when people do unexpected things), lightly taking her hands, which are now splayed on the sofa slightly curled up protectively. I can't resist the smile growing on my face as I look at her, how she reminds me of a tiny animal, like a little kitten, with those large innocent eyes and body that so naturally curls up into a ball.

"Annie, they let me come back a few days earlier than expected. I've missed you so much, love, how have you been?" I'm careful in my phrasing on the last part, because she, being somewhere in there the strong girl she once was, hates appearing weak and people enquiring to her wellbeing as if she's a glass figurine that might shatter at a slight breeze. I wouldn't dare tell her, but that's exactly how I think of her sometimes, though I have been told on numerous occasions that I'm overprotective of her, especially by Mags, who jokingly insists I should get over myself and not expect her to fall apart every time I leave for the Capitol.

She relaxes slightly, and I know she understands that I'm really here, she hasn't just imagined me, but all she does is stare at me for a long time, tears silently sliding down her cheeks, until her green eyes flicker to the television, which has become an annoying buzzing over my shoulder as I am blinded by my concern for Annie. She looks back at me with such a painful expression on her face needles cut into me to even look at it, before sinking back to lie on the sofa wordlessly, saying my name in a strained whisper, her hands slipping from my grip to simply lie weakly underneath mine, neither an acceptance nor rejection of my affection.

Confused, and feeling a helpless panic tide up inside me mingled with the sorrowful ebbing of my excitement for seeing Annie again, I turn round to the television for clues to this strange outburst. They are playing footage of a party held the evening of the Victor's announcement, held in honour of the tribute in question whilst they themselves lie senseless, getting prettied up and mended. All Victors who happen to be in the Capitol are 'invited' to go, though most of them are lucky enough to blend into the fretwork and sit in a corner miserably chatting to other Victors until an acceptably early time for them to escape without appearing rude.

Unfortunately, I'm too popular to not be noticed, and since it's Snow's mansion the party is held in (that creature has many parties in his ridiculously large dwelling for someone who never attends them), I can feel his beady, dark eyes watching me like a panther teasing its prey, licking it's lips and enjoying that perfect moment of anticipation before a delectable meal. Most times, he uses these events as an opportunity to hand me to his most prized clients via the hateful, rose-scented notes his servants in flawless white hand me. Others, he just orders that I maintain my reputation by spending the whole time flirting with as many girls as possible.

Sometimes I think I prefer the first. Then it's only one woman whose usually so deluded they don't always notice the slips in my act, plus I can revel in my small victory when I've got a secret out of them, and blame Snow, since I can at least comfort myself in what Mags always tells me: I was sold, there isn't a spot of blame that can be placed on me, as weak and pathetic as it makes me feel. But, with the second, though I can't show it, I feel so embarrassed and shameful, acting like I'm some self-obsessed pig in front of the cameras which capture every terrible moment forever, in view of my fellow Victors whose pitying and disgusted looks I can't stand to face, and I know that though this is expected of me, every action is my choice, my interpretation of an evil man's orders.

Sometimes the worst part is how I have to listen to their endless drivel and pretend to care about their pathetic little lives, even though their voices make my head ache and ears ring, and the selfish, ungrateful things they say make me want to punch a wall. At least with clients they are so infatuated and desperate to get their money's worth out of their shiny new purchase that there isn't much conversation before I can let my wearied body do the work.

I grimace as I see myself on the television, looking coifed in a hideously showy white suit with gold trim, in the midst of finery and civilisation, my mouth at the ear of a girl who I'm standing behind, whose surgery gives her the scaled, shiny skin and yellow eyes of a lizard. I remember her, mostly because she had freaked me out so much. Those eyes, round and scarily unnatural, those shadows of the mutations haunting me in my nightmares sent shivers running down my spine and it had taken everything I could to hold her gaze and not take off for the nearest exit. You can't hear what I'm saying on the footage, but the image of shameless debauchery is sickening enough, as I see the man, who I must see as myself but I find it hard to, slowly slide a hand up the side of her body: simple but effective. In a district, where we are self-respecting, a girl would slap you in the face for even thinking of such behaviour, but in the Capitol, where every man just sees women as objects for one thing, where the object of a party is to be seen having 'pulled' the most attractive person, and where they seem to have no understanding of the concept of a personal bubble anyway, the action is met by the woman giggling like a schoolgirl and twisting round to run her hands over the man's chest like it's one of those fluffy furnishings Capitol people buy just to stroke.

I turn back to Annie, who's gazing at me ashamedly like a puppy caught nibbling my shoelace, and the pieces fall together. She hadn't been crying because of flashbacks, or the isolation and confusion her 'madness' has brought her, which was why she hadn't experienced the wrenching sadness and twisted fantasies that takes an age for her to recover from. It was the ordinary crying of a teenager watching the boy she loves with some other girl.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I feel relief, because for a Victor with the horrors which plague us, to be able to be concerned for ordinary events which any other worries about is one step higher on the impossibly never-ending ladder to normalcy. And the fact Annie can do this clearly marks an improvement in her state of mind.

That quickly burns away however as all the apologies and shame I have felt these past few weeks surface in a great stabbing pain in my chest: essentially cheating on Annie, even if it was forced and she said she understands, and the knowledge I have caused my Annie pain, the girl who I vowed to always protect has been betrayed by my ignorant compliance with my stylist's portrayal of me, my inability to be stronger, more intelligent and how I've left those who I love, who depend on me, to be the powerless pawns of Snow.

I stare down at the ground, unable to look at her face. I can't touch her with these whore's hands, murderer's hands, so I slowly remove them from Annie's soft, delicate ones. I feel her sit up properly on the sofa.

"Finn, I'm sorry. I turned it on to drown out the voices and, and, well, I know it's not your fault, but I hate seeing you like that, and…" she trails off, unaccustomed to the rhythm of words and the skill of sentence-making after a life of being shy and reserved, and so many months of self-imposed solitude after her Games.

I'm speechless, unable to see past the wall of tears and lost in a stupor of shock and hate, so much so I can barely sit up anymore and instead sink down to rest on my folded legs, using the armrest to keep my slumped body propped weakly up. Over these past seven years, I've been in a pit of self-hatred so deep I can barely crawl out of there and I've forgotten what its like to feel pride, to be truly happy. But I've never hated myself this much, at the pinnacle of my sins and the terrible truth of the bitter shell I have become, used and bought so much I don't know who I am anymore.

I think of my sweet, innocent Annie, who has been through so much more than the wonderful, compassionate girl she is should have to endure, and I wonder why I ever allowed her to act out her deluded misconception that she loves me. Because I'm selfish, and have a weakness for beautiful things, and I thoughtlessly took advantage of a vulnerable girl who clearly deserves someone better. Someone like her should never even have to look at the despicable mess of a person I am, a self-centred killer, who can't, shouldn't, ever love someone because I can't offer them anything but pain as a result of the way the Capitol has its fingernails dug under my skin.

So I make a decision.

I allow myself a glance at Annie, whose eyes are deep pools of pain with waves of apology rising up to meet me. No, don't look at me like that, like you love me, you poor mistreated child, you don't understand how wrong that is.

"Annie" I begin, my voice cracking because to let her go will break me apart, but I love her so much that I will do anything to make her life as good as it can be, even if that means taking myself out of it "You have nothing to apologise for, I'm the one who needs to say I'm sorry. For letting this" I indicate the two of us with my hand "continue when it's clearly making you unhappy. I'll leave you now, and I'll try not to bother you again"

I begin to get up, pulling myself with weak, unresponsive arms, too much of a coward to look into her eyes because I'm scared I might beg her to take me back and to see the disgust in them as she realises who I truly am. I intend to walk out and leave her in peace, I'm only making her life worse being here. I realise she is in my house, because she thinks she needs me, and curse myself for the dependence which she has developed on me, and how, even though ultimately it will be better to walk away, I will always be causing her pain through my abandoning her. Can I do nothing right?

"Finn!" she sounds surprised, probably relieved I've finally given her the excuse to leave her useless, terrible excuse for a lover. She'd be too nice to tell me outright that I am ruining her life and that our relationship is toxic. I ignore the longing that pulses through me when I hear her sweet voice say my name, and the ache in my heart as if snow-white hands are squeezing it with all their might, and continue standing up, only to be stopped by two small hands on my shoulders. Annie slips down to join me on the carpet and, when I look everywhere but her she grabs my face and forces me to stare apologetically into her eyes before asking, aghast "What do you mean? Are you…leaving me?"

Swallowing the words which my heart tries to desperately force through my lips, I calmly reply, convincing myself that this is the right, the best thing for Annie, and that's what matters whatever cost to myself. I gently but firmly remove her hands, but hold her gaze with what I hope is a reassuring look.

"It's for the best. You deserve someone much better than me, someone who won't cause you any pain and who'll be there always for you, who can treat you right and love you and only you, and will make you happy"

She stares at me incredulously with those so stunning, irresistible eyes, which are ringed with fresh tears. Her voice sounds broken and distressed, like the whine of a fox as it dies, as I know from the forest nearby where my friend 'legally' practices his spearing skills.

"Do…do you not love me anymore?"

"I-" I consider lying, after all it'll be easier for her to get over me if she doesn't have my feelings to cling onto. But I can't deceive her, and I suspect she'd know I was lying anyway, since she can read me like no other, and she has always had a talent of silently studying people with those eyes which see everything, even what isn't truly there, and knowing them better than they know themselves. Plus, I've never been good at lying: whilst telling some painted Capitol woman who doesn't know what affection is that I love her isn't too hard, to deny my feelings, cemented like the strong roots of an ancient tree, for Annie, would be like saying the sea is pink, or the sun is the moon, or the Hunger Games are fair. So I settle for saying it quickly. "Of course I love you, but don't you see that you can't love me? How can we be together when it makes you cry?" I nod to the sofa, reminding her of the position I'd found her in mere minutes ago.

Annie shakes her head, looking so sad her face is the epitome of cloud and rain, "No, Finnick, you're wrong. Yes, I feel jealous and hurt and betrayed when I see you with them, but I also feel loss. Because you belong to me, and I belong to you, and I love you for everything you are, good and bad" I'm still unconvinced, unable to tear my gaze away from those tears which stain her beautiful face and which I caused. I can't forget what a horrible person I am who doesn't deserve the love of such a gentle, kind girl.

"But-" I try to protest, but Annie takes my hands, which flop uselessly at my sides, and squeezes them so desperately hard I feel my circulation begin to cut off.

"Finn, Snow has taken so much from you and me, don't let him take _us_. I _need_ you, you're the only one who makes life bearable again, who brings me out of my flashbacks. Don't you remember how happy we make each other?"

I don't see how any force in the world, any amount of torture the Capitol throws at me, can make me forget. Blissful hours lying side by side gazing up at the clouds and the stars. Playing childish games with her little brother and us getting more excitable than him when we win, ignoring his sounds of disgust in the background when we act 'mushy'. Peaceful afternoons passed watching the orange sun slowly sink whilst sat out on the porch or up on the stone cliffs. The look on Annie's face when I'd finally managed to coax her back into the ocean which she'd once loved before she saw it as tainted with blood and every log and rock became a tribute body, the look of someone overcoming their most monumental fear and allowing it to float away like a feather in the wind.

I know I'd give it all up if that would help Annie, and I'm still convinced that she could find someone a lot more suitable to take care of her, but there is a part of her argument which put any ideas of me leaving to a standstill. _'Snow has taken so much from you and me, don't let him take us'_. Damn, she knows me too well and how to get right into my heart. Snow, that evil maggot, has taken everything, my childhood, my future, my happiness, my freedom, my morality, my dignity, my innocence, and it would be to let him win, to control me and break me completely, to let him tear me apart from the girl I love. And as long as I live I will continue the fight, the drive, the ambition that kept me going in the arena: I will never allow the Capitol to win.

After all they've done to me, I'll happily play any part in the rebellion that I know will come, if, hope against hope, it occurs in my lifetime. And if my rebellion against that place involves me continuing my relationship with Annie, then, well rebelling has some great perks. So, for now I decide to shove my better judgement to the back of my head, and try to assume what Annie is desperate to cling onto. I can't bear to see her desolate like this anymore.

I relax and ease our hands into a more comfortable position (that actually allows my blood to flow), interlocking our fingers, and bend my head so our foreheads are together, relishing the familiar touch of her skin against mine, a sensation more natural and welcomed by my body than breathing. I say, with a slight sigh of lingering reluctance and uncertainty, still reeling from the pain I have caused her

"Okay, Rainbow, you win, as always"

Her face softens into a small smile, but I see her relief and gladness in the light of her eyes, especially at the mention of her nickname, which I gave to her after we were swimming once and a rainbow trout developed a strange fascination with her and followed her around. She had refused to let me kill it, finding it's inquisitive nudging of her stone-still leg strangely therapeutic, and she was distressed when we had to leave, knowing she'd never see her new friend again, so I'd caught it in my hand (a skill I learnt when I was younger and my friends and I would spend whole afternoons trying to show off to each other), having no fishing equipment with me at the time, and we kept it in her en suite bathtub until I managed to persuade the glassmaker to make a tank. Visitors to her house are always amused when they see him swimming round in the front hall, there isn't a precedent for someone in Four keeping a fish as a pet, except if its one of the rare or beautiful ones (rainbow trouts being neither) sold to the few well to do of the district, and it doesn't exactly aid in rebuking the perception of Annie as insane.

"Together?" She asks hesitantly whilst I almost unconsciously stroke her thumb with my own.

"Together" For a while we just kneel there hugging on the floor of my sitting room, immersing ourselves in each other after painful weeks apart, until she pulls back slightly and sighs

"I love you, Finnick Odair" I'll never tire of hearing that. I smile at her, our faces inches apart, and I finally get the soft kiss that I've waited weeks for.

"I love you, Annie Cresta"

When we embrace again, she whispers in my ear, in her adorably shy way with a cheeky smile I can feel rather than see. This is a rare side to her which no one ever glimpses apart from me.

"I hope you aren't intending to save your love only for those Capitol women"

I can't help but let an uncontrollable grin fly across my face. No one but Annie can bring me so much happiness when before I felt such desolation.

...

My shoulders still feel warm where her lips tenderly touched the ugly, pink fingernail scars etched into my skin, and whilst she sleeps beside me in my bed, so peaceful and young and bright you'd find it impossible to believe she had ever even heard of such a sadistic and brutal idea as the Games, I fiddle with her pale, thin fingers, which had stroked the bruises and marks those gruesome encounters with strange women had left me with.

I contemplate the day, and how a short while ago I had been prepared to walk away and never see her again, to allow myself to be fed to the lions without a sword: a useless piece of beautiful potential on its own, but in my hand a force to protect and support me. We've never really had arguments or threatened to break up like this, but our relationship has never been truly stable or carefree, and we're Victors, the strongest who can overcome impossible odds, so we'll get over this breakdown of mine. That's what Annie and I do, reassure each other of our realities so we don't slip into the fantasies and nightmares that pull us into their depths, and she has reminded me today that we belong together as well as I know that the sun will always rise if you wait long enough, no matter what happens or however hard it is to stay together when it seems so much easier to break apart.

I used to never really believe in fate. It seemed some ridiculous, wishful fantasy dreamed up by desperate teenage girls who looked at their parents and comforted themselves in thinking one day they'd meet their 'Mr Right' by some mystical force. It's sure easier than looking. But after all that's happened to me, I find some odd solace in deluding myself that none of those nightmarish events which paint my life story like blood splatters on a canvas were truly due to my actions, that my reaping, that those people I've murdered, the way that without my knowing it I've suddenly become a toy to be used, are not due to my decisions but simply cards placed down by some abstract diviner. Perhaps if I can consider everything to be inevitable, then nothing is my fault.

So when it comes to Annie, sometimes I think that we were meant to be an us from the very moment we were born, that before we even knew what love was our fate was sealed in a glass bowl ready to be set into motion by hands, pink and soft, but with a power enormous enough to leave cascading fathoms of valleys in so many people's lives. The reaping is a ricocheting tidal wave of disaster and darkness, occasionally lit by a tiny star of light fuelled by the kinder threads of fate. My light is Annie, and it feels like she was always there, glowing silently in the darkness, and it took a series of inexplicable events to build that candle into an inferno which has engulfed me.

Yes, fire is an appropriate way to see our relationship: left to simmer it warms, comforts, brightens, yet one spark and it becomes something explosive, destructive, painful. But without fire we would be in darkness, left only with the ghosts of our pasts.

* * *

><p><strong>I feel like the style of my writing has changed from the first one-shot in this story to the second and third since the latter are more plot-based rather than random ramblings, and I think it's become worse. <strong>**I'm also not sure about my portrayal of these characters, especially Annie, since I don't think they're quite as creative or in character as some amazing fics which I've read. So I'd really appreciate you guys' opinions of these stories so that I can improve :)**


	4. Madness in chaos

**So I love Annie, and I just had to write about her madness. It's a bit fluffy, but well, that's our favourite couple for you!  
>Enjoy :)<strong>

* * *

><p>The sand's usual golden, dusty hue and the ocean's endless iridescence; sapphire intertwining with emerald, crowned with pure, frothy white, appear a rose-tinted memory in the grey ghostly light haunting the beach. Looming, grim clouds scorn the earth by denying the sunlight its joy of bestowing its welcomed gift on our so desperate district, and leech away the colour, the life, from the Victor's Beach to leave the monochrome skeleton of a radiant beauty.<p>

Sand pierces the delicate skin between my toes as the icy surge of water furiously tears at the millions of grains which grasp onto the beach beneath my feet before being dragged helplessly backwards in the deep, into those towering, bottomless black shapes writhing in the dying yellow shadows of sunset.

The wind whistles, ripping at my shirt and launching tiny missiles of sand into my eyes, and it echoes in the void of silence that hollows the stretch of seafront which is so very empty, a graveyard for the tears of torn souls who mourn their childhood, their sanity.

I can glimpse the neat wooden posts which indicate the line between the beach allocated to Victors and that occasionally used for fishermen desperate for a rare catch and for a quiet place for first swimming lessons. The ground there has the faded glimmer of the sun still radiant upon it, still fighting through the darkness of those suffocating clouds.

I know that with every leisurely step, every indent I make in the flawless expanse of gold, I reach closer to a barrier which I can never overcome, the line between being ordinary and my lonely, darkened life as a Victor, forever tossed around in the waves, desperately flailing against incandescent current. Like a fish flopping helplessly, awaiting the moment it will be speared, so it can be mutilated, its dignity reduced to a prettied up mess offered on a plate to an unappreciative painted puppet of a person.

A strand of ebony hair is tossed carelessly into my view by the warm air currents, and it reminds me that I am not truly walking alone. I glance to the side of me furthest from the raging waters, where a petite girl gazes out with unfathomable, thoughtful eyes at the endless line of horizon, which has blurred into a blend of greys.

We glide to a stop a little way from the barrier and turn to stare out at the ocean in a heavy, companionable silence, as if words could coax the sun into survival again, but are torn away from our mouths: by the wind which pummels the breath from our lungs and by the bleak remnants of a storm settling over our beloved ocean, like the slavering shadow of a murderer over an innocent victim.

I can sometimes feel tiny shudders reverberating through the bony form tucked against my side, from either the chill resting upon us in the lulls of the soupy breeze, or the lingering of hydrophobia etched into every facet, jerked into life by the malevolent ferocity of the waves. I simply press her comfortingly against me, my arm round her shoulders, and stroke my thumb against the goose-pimpled skin of her arm, while her grip around my waist tightens.

We both know what seeing this is doing to her, like witnessing a gentle friend suddenly turn to a murderous rage, but that she, being the same strong Annie she always was somewhere deep inside of her, a battered bruised little minnow still fighting against the current, is determined to face it with that illogical knowledge she clings to that with me she is perfectly safe from any harm.

Suddenly her warmth and weight is pulled from me, and I know from experience what I'll see even before I turn to see her eyes dim into panicked emptiness, like a fragile filament allowed to drift into the cold death of darkness, still aware of being trapped inside the glass prison of a lightbulb. Annie backs away, her hands flying to her ears as she shakes her head, a silent terrified plea to monsters no one can see but her.

I call her name softly and take her arm, trying to pull her out of the visions before they overcome her, but she jerks away from my touch, stares through me with wild, terrified eyes, screaming

"No! Go away!" I can't tell if she is talking to the visions themselves or to the pantomime figures which dance within them, probably both. When her mind wanders like this, a distant part of her slams against a glass wall, vaguely aware this is all imaginary but unable to escape its iron grip.

"C'mon, Annie, none of it's real. Come back to me, love" I edge closer to take hold of her, knowing that enveloping her senses will eventually bring her back. The moment my arms encircle her though, she struggles desperately against me, thrashing and scratching and beating every inch of me her writhing limbs can get to, screaming at me to stop, her fickle friend of a brain telling her I'm some tribute. Probably that brute of a Career from Two who had restrained her, forced her to watch as the girl from One severed her ally's neck with a swift, brutal blow of her sword.

I take the pain – for a small, frail girl she can inflict a lot of damage under the right motivation – and pull her back towards me from where she struggles against my fingertips, this time holding her from behind with my arms pinning down hers so she can't attack me. I murmur reassurances into her ear even when the sharp bones of her jaw and her skull knock against mine sharply as she continues to struggle against me.

"Annie, I'm here…you're safe, love, they're not going to hurt you ever again…I'll protect you, Rainbow…please come back"

"No, no! Please stop!" she cries, and something tears inside of me, torn to shreds and fluttering down to join the rotting pile of threads buried in me, to see her face contorted in terror; to see those sights, which haunt us all in vivid visions, in tangible reality; hear her voice so shrill in the highs of horror. The worst part is that I am helpless to protect her: though every cell courses with a violent energy to kill anything that hurts my precious Annie, I can only hold her and pray she will come back to me.

In the Capitol, and in the deluded minds of wishful girls in my district, I am viewed as some kind of god, a supernatural being whose limits are boundless. Whilst at first I let those thoughts fester in my mind and become hideous arrogance, its at moments like this that I realise my true, naked humanity: when the dark demons of the past peer from every crevice and allow the seeds of memory to spawn into poison fruits, ripping large gaping scars in mine and Annie's souls as they tear through us.

Eventually, after fighting desperately against me, I feel Annie go limp and her screams fade into plaintive whimpers of pain, the sobs of a gentle creature bent into submission by the iron grip of blood-drenched spikes thrust through brittle bone. An inescapable trap laid by a heartless hunter whose bloodlust is not satiated by mere animals. Her legs weaken and I support her as she slides down to meet the unforgiving surface of the sand. She keels right over, trembling, burying her face – fragmented by tears and wild locks of hair – into the sand, her hands fluttering over her ears, pleading "Please don't...just stop, kill me instead"

"Annie, can you hear me? It's Finnick, you're safe, just come back to me, c'mon" I murmur to her, stroking her arms, rubbing her shivering back; bristling with bones, brushing back her soft hair, now that there's no fear of her trying to hit me. She lies there whispering to the sand, making bargains with apparitions, until I hear a broken remnant of my name, flown as a clumsy rag of a life raft in a monstrous whirlpool of nightmares; of untraceable screams and blood splattering, swords thudding, canons echoing.

I'm not even certain if this barely intelligible murmur is actually my name or just senseless syllables only weaved into the semblance of a familiar word by a desperate mind, but I grasp onto this small hint of my Annie emerging from the darkness, lying down beside her hunched body and cautiously trying to pull her face up from the ground so I can see her.

"Yes, Finnick's here, Annie. Come and talk to me, come to Finnick"

Her face half-turns towards me with the coaxing of my gentle hand on her chin, partly the woman who always responds to my touch, but I feel a small tug of resistance as the fingers of delusion are playing a tug of war with the girl they love to torture so much. I can see the luminous emerald slit of her eye framed by long, thick black lashes, half-closed as if squinting in a blinding light, and I know she is frightened that to open her eyes will lay welcome to another barrage of beheaded small boys and axe-wielders dancing round a spurting fountain of blood.

"You're safe now, Annie, you can open your eyes, Finnick'll protect you"

She softly repeats my words, a child stumbling out of a world full of nameless shapes and colours and beginning to thoughtlessly replicate every sound, slowly trying to figure out their meaning.

"Safe…eyes…Finnick" Her voice sounds so small, so tired, tired of the burden of dreaming, of waking, of living, yet dreamy, in that soft state of flying, cushioned by cloud between the midnight forests of the past and the cloudy skies of reality.

I don't know why, but the pure, childlike vulnerability that pervades her lovely, seamless face upon gradually drifting into our world, like dew on morning grass, sparks tiny, burning tears in my eyes. A smile tugs at my lips, my muscles so used to automatic actions, jumping to respond the only way they can do to seeing the only woman I'll love. Her face softens slightly, though her eyes are still pained and confused yet so beautiful, shaky mirages of emerald treasure shimmering tantalizingly, like twin sirens, through water blazing silver in the bask of a clouded moon.

Then Annie seemingly forgets I am there, sinking back to the ground, the sand becoming a puzzle of craters and mazes of valleys under her fingers and her hazy gaze. But I know she is just taking a moment to adjust to the jolting return to reality, to sift through the patchwork blanket which surrounds her, of visions real and imaginary and what was once real but is now recruited to the ghastly ranks of spectral torturers. I sit back on my heels beside her and wait, feeling entirely useless again, and try not to think that she reminds me of a small child drawing pictures on the pavement with chalk.

Finally, she slowly looks up from the sand, and like a radiant butterfly delicately emerging from its solid, deludingly delicate prison, her face has been transformed into the sweet, perpetually wistful gaze of my Annie. She reaches up to me with the tentative, jerky movements of a girl unsure whether she will pass through an illusion, her hand pausing a few inches away, stilled by the weight of uncertainty.

"Finn?" her voice sounds cracked and hushed, like the voices which haunt funerals, whipped into sombreness.

I smile encouragingly, so very careful with my movements so as not to alarm her, and gently catch her hand to place it against my cheek. "Hello, Annie" I whisper, so afraid that even a normal voice will break her like I accidentally snapped my mother's glass figure of a ballet dancer.

A few seconds tick by where we are locked in a picturesque stillness on our knees in the sand, my hand against hers on my face, staring into each other's eyes in a bittersweet portrait as the final pieces click into place in Annie's mind, the only movement the wind gently blowing strands of our hair in our faces, only sound the crashing backdrop of a gush of dark water in an endless cycle.

I become aware of a raspy, unsettling sound, rhythmic yet somehow an irregular, alarmed pattern, and it takes me a second too late to realise that it is Annie's hyperventilated breath, quick and shallow, before the light in her eyes begins to dim again.

"No, Annie, stay with me!" I call, desperation to hold onto these rare, fleeting beautiful moments beating down any attempt of tenderness. She simply stares at me with terrified eyes half-seeing and half lost to the nightmares as her grip on my hand tightens and she tips towards me, her body automatically gravitating blindly towards anything that will offer the semblance of safety.

"I'm drowning, Finn, it's coming for me" she breathes, horror muffling the volume of her voice, which only amplifies the suffering behind it, a pitiful whine begging for help she doesn't wholly expect to come in the face of unimaginable hell.

My momentary confusion as to the cause of this relapse dissipates as, in the echoing silence, a chill liquid embraces my knee, and a realisation hits me. I instantly wish it hit me harder because I should have realised it sooner: the sound and feel of crashing waves (the tide having come in to where we collapsed during Annie's episode) have become too much for her. She only ventures into the water when she is fully in control of her mind, or as can be, because the fear of those once so familiar waves is so rooted, tattooed into the marrow of her bones, that otherwise it overcomes her, heaves her up, throws her against impaling rocks and buries her in it's cold, salty grip.

I stare at her, realising she had addressed me, and is still looking at rather than through me, telling me she isn't completely lost in an illusion. A sickeningly positive thought ghosts through my mind, as I acknowledge that this situation, lilting on the edge of a cliff, is preferable to her tumbling helplessly through the air off it, because this is something I can easier manage rather than helplessly sitting by, feeling myself grow more useless and wretched by the second. Whilst episodes in her mind are only produced and experienced by her, therefore unreachable to anyone else, directly influencing outside elements whilst she is aware like this can bring her back.

"No, no, Annie, you aren't going to drown, it's okay" I see the frothy wall of white rapidly close in on us again, and I quickly stand and scoop her up in my arms before it can leak into her unconscious, nodding to the ocean to divert her wide, frightened eyes, pinned onto mine for help, towards the true cause of her fear "See, it's just the tide, but you're away from it now. You won't drown, I won't let you"

She turns away to follow my gaze and stare at the water, and for a long moment she lies so still in my grip that I wonder if she has gone to sleep – these episodes can drain her of all energy sometimes – so I softly whisper her name. Her head jerks towards me immediately at the sound, as only Victors can leap to the tiniest of noises, and my heart swells when I see she has truly become herself, a stupid grin tugging at my lips automatically.

"Hey, Rainbow"

A small, drowsy smile lights up her face, only to slide into a look of guilt, and I rush to stop her with a soft, light kiss before she apologises as she always does. When I pull away I reassure her "It's okay, it wasn't your fault"

Annie doesn't look too content with my acceptance; I know there is an eternal parasite of guilt feeding away inside of her, always cursing her for ruining our moments together. And I hate that: yes it breaks me in tiny pieces to have to see her like that, to have to pull her back together over and over, but I love Annie for everything she is, episodes and all, and it only hurts me more to see her feel bad for something she cannot help, for something which really that despicable Capitol should rot in the shadows of the graves of those they have killed for.

All I want, the wearying quest which I have set my lost and purposeless life spent drifting lifelessly between the ocean and stranger's beds, is for Annie to be happy, no matter what the cost to myself, because her in moments of rare, genuine joy; her soft, tinkling laugh, her beautiful smile, the way she'll excitedly clap her hands, is what drives me every day. It is the first thing I want to see every morning, the last image in the picture show of my life that I know will flash in my mind before the life drifts from my body forever.

She yawns and I see her eyes beginning to droop, so I ask her if she wants to go back home. She grips me tighter, alarmed as if I'm about to somehow hurl her straight back into her house.

"No! I mean, I'd like to stay here, just until the sun's gone down" she gazes at me with her round, green eyes, bright and imploring and irresistible – I can't comprehend why people so go on about my eyes when compared to hers they are dull rocks, bronze beside Fabergé – and I feel myself melting helplessly as an ice cube held mercilessly above a roaring fire.

"Whatever you want, darling"

Annie scrambles out of my arms, warily edging away from the tide hungrily swallowing up the beach. The last yellowing tendrils of light clinging onto the insistent backdrop of night slowly sink into oblivion as we stand there, still and silent silhouettes clutching each other in the midst of the cacophony of chaos that is the circus of a storm.

* * *

><p><strong>Just as a side note, I realised when I was thinking about doing an Annie POV story that she only has like three short lines of speech in the whole series, and that for the amount they are built up we never really see Annie and Finnick together. It's a shame as I want to know how they interact and speak to each other, and I really hope the film adaption shows us more, as we only ever hear about how they are together off-hand, we never actually see one conversation between them or know anything about their past.<strong>


	5. Blood over water

**Bonjour. I thought I'd update this selection, though I don't think this particular chapter is very good. It's unbearably mushy at parts, but I guess you could say it's a late Valentine's present from me ^_^**

**Partly inspired by a truly amazing fanfiction, 'Where Soul Meets Body' by frombluetored, which is possibly the best Finnick/Annie biography I've ever read :)**

* * *

><p>It's strange how life turns out. I thought I lost my family to a well-timed accident a long time ago, but here I am, with two people who years ago I could never have dreamed I'd have even met, yet who are enmeshed with my life stronger than any strand of DNA could be woven.<p>

We are surrounded by white; the pure glow of the sun, lowering sleepily in the sky; the glints of light winking at us playfully from the tips of waves, the strip of millions of sand grains bathing on the ground, their yellow bellies fading to cream under the intense glare of heat; the flaking paint of the fence posts and wooden decking which Mags refuses to get repainted on the grounds there are 'more important things to think about'.

In this endless place one could lie forever and only notice that any time had passed by the sun dipping towards oblivion. It's all so dazzlingly different from the lurid brightness and sparkle and bustling, shoving bodies which savaged my eyes what seems like so long ago but was only a month back. The Capitol pride over intricate metal constructions which block the sun's rays, and fight over high-rise rooms from which they can catalogue the teeming, oblivious masses they control like millions of ants aimlessly scurrying around, waiting for the nudging ring-encrusted finger of someone who can see all but the beautiful stars from their imposing tower blocks.

Sometimes my view of District Four is tainted; perfect rows of beauty contorted by tears, drowning the all-encompassing beach and sky in the sorrow of a man who questions why an infamously shameless murderer deserves to even hear that such beauty exists. But not today. Today is for us to celebrate that such joy can linger in sacred nooks of a hideous world.

Today is Mags' eighty-third birthday. If anything can reinforce to three people, all broken in different and irreparable ways and jaggedly sewn together by each other's clumsy, uncertain, bloody hands, of the sanctity of life it is the celebration of another year defying the odds. Every second, every heartbeat that we live marks defiance of the Capitol's oppression: we hacked our way out of starvation, bruised but still kicking to show to our district that there is an escape from a life swimming against an unfightable current. Even if that does mean diving down into the darkest depths, forever anchored to the rough sand, gazing up at the undertow of identical, spindly fish struggling to not get swept away.

I'm thrown from my thoughts by a throaty chuckle close to my side. My head turns unwillingly, sluggishly, as if waiting for my brain to catch up from its contented drift dancing with the seagulls skimming the glittering ocean. I see Mags grinning from her seat beside me on the bench patiently standing guard on her porch, and I realise a smile already tugs my lips as I ask what it is.

She simply shakes her head, her smile still so wide it practically breaks her face in half. This is quite normal for Mags, who could find a pocket of laughter in the most sombre room. She's one of those wonderfully steady people who, no matter what label their body staples upon them, act as youthful and bright as someone three generations down. I can imagine her being just the same when she was my age (as strange as that is to try to picture), though now her crinkled eyes shine with wisdom gleaned from years of a tangle of every kind of extreme situation. Even days after her stroke a year ago, at which I swear I was more petrified than at any point during my Games, she was making jokes about how I needed to shave.

Sometimes I wonder if she was like this before her Reaping. I've never seen her Games, since it would feel like a gross invasion of privacy and, somewhere deep down, I know that I do not want to associate the kindly, joyful old woman I have grown to love with the young, desperate killer she once was. Sometimes it's less painful to wonder.

She inclines her head, motioning to myself and the young woman on the other side of me. As always when I ask her a question, I instantly feel a nagging guilt wriggling away inside of me as she struggles to form the words bursting inside of her. She was never that talkative, but speech became one of those aspects, like all of the best ones, that you only appreciate when it is gone. I know how frustrating it can be when she can feel all these wonderful soothing words sliding to the front of her tongue, where they are butchered to harsh, splintered stumps. "Loo-looked…same"

Confused, I glance over at Annie, who is gazing dreamily at the sea with a typical detached, wistful intensity. I guess Mags thought our expressions were mirror images, though I don't agree with how she put it, for Annie looks so much more beautiful than I could ever be. This is the gaze that blesses her face most of the time, it is the look I fell deep in love with.

People think that when she looks like this she is exiting her mind, receding into the shattered skeleton of a person she became after her Games, but I feel honoured to be one of the few who know that this is when her pure, original self is laid bare before the world. When the delicate, seamless surface of a face thinly veils a mind which has always searched the empty air and infinite recesses of the cave of her imagination for a better world, a reality where no pain can ever be born. I know that right now, in her mind, the ocean is a more stunning blue than any human has ever seen, and that she is hanging the sky with diamonds.

Every atom in Annie's world is everything good and beautiful, because it is a mirror of its creator, and though people are saddened by her ability to escape this reality, when I see her like this I only wish I could be with her, see what must be the most magnificent of sights to produce such a serene, calm expression on her face. Once, she shook herself from her thoughts and was confused why I was dressed in my ordinary fishing clothes and sitting on the dock, because she had spent the past hour in glowing white under the shade of a net, exchanging vows binding us in the eyes of the world forever. I remember being hideously jealous because my wishful fantasies of our wedding day are always tainted by the image of Snow standing at the back of the crowd, breathing down my neck and putting his filthy hands on Annie's as he tugs us apart, laughing with sparkling teeth speckled with blood.

I watch her now, entranced by the radiant beauty of her pensive expression, her full lips curving into a gentle smile, welcoming a mirage of spectacular spectres flickering atop the waves. A sharp, uncut fingernail spearing my side yanks me from my stupor, and I turn to see Mags still sitting there, leaning over and watching the both of us with a proud smile on her face. She is the parent bursting with joy for her children's happiness, she understands Annie and I's bond more than our actual parents do, because when she sees us she can stare straight into our souls, rather than see just the masks, the silicone constructions of people who cannot bear to burden their families with facts they can never understand.

Mags murmers something which I guess to be about not forgetting her cake, and I take from her jokingly indignant tone that she is politely demanding we have it now. And what Mags wants, she gets from us, always. Annie tells me I spoil her too much, like last mothers day when I brought her a bunch of flowers, practically the entire stock of the flower shop, and left a line of multicoloured blooms down to the beach (mostly orange and yellow, her favourite colours) where Annie, Mags' family and closest friends and I were waiting with a boat which tipped uncertainly under the weight of ribbons, lights and flowers. But I don't think I could ever give her enough, no matter how many boats and cakes and flowers I buy her could ever smash the weight over my shoulders, the metal birdcage of fluttering faithful promises, life-saving commitment, kind words, and scarily accurate advice.

Mags is important to Annie too, of course, but more as a grandmother, a much loved visitor who brings gifts and needs looking after. It's different for me, having her fulfil the role of mother from when I was still a child, and even now (as I see frequently from her fussing over my sugar intake) she more cares and worries for me than the other way round. Even though sometimes she still acts as more of a child than either of us do: after all, what eighty-three year old still practically bounces up and down at the prospect of cake?

"Alright, impatient, I get the hint! Now if you could be a darling and set out the plates, I'll wake up Sleeping Beauty" I laugh, slipping into the easy flirtiness I always cling to when I'm feeling particularly at peace with myself and life. I've learnt my attractiveness isn't always a negative thing to be exploited mechanically under duress, that I can joke about it, with friends who understand me and love me for who I am. It's almost like satire of my Capitol self, who I can sometimes now disassociate with the fisherman-turned-poet who lives beside the beach in District Four.

I stand to help Mags heave herself up from her seat, and as she hobbles into the shadows cast by an invitingly ajar white door, I hear a soft voice behind me.

"I'm not asleep" I can hear the smile in her statement before I turn to see it, and I leap onto the bench beside Annie, throwing my arm round her shoulders and pulling her to me.

"You were dreaming though" I retort, because I don't want to sound like those ignorant Capitol idiots who think she's unconscious with her eyes open. I just have a partiality to the comparison of her with figures from the stories she loves to read, who are supposedly perfect but are as lovely as the hideous monsters which entrap them when compared to Annie.

"It wasn't a dream, it was real". She keeps her face a solemn mask, but I can see the laughter in her eyes as she continues "I was telling the snapper fish about how they should stop trying to bite fishermen..." She strokes the small scar on my thumb from when I helped load a big haul last week "...and they said they would only agree if I had tea with them in their reedbed, so I did, and it was lovely – the octopus made us all yummy cups of tea in these lovely little china cups decorated with starfish who told me they liked my hair"

I keep my expression sincere as, ignoring the temptation to question the gross holes in hydrophysics logic (to which I'm sure she could make up some surprisingly plausible excuse), I ask how many sugars she took in her tea. Annie laughs, a clear bright tinkling sound that clutches at the soft flesh of my heart and tugs my lips up insistently.

"Silly Finnick! They don't have sugar cubes underwater!" I pretend to look horrified.

"No sugar? What kind of barren, cruel place is it those mean, fishermen-hungry, bad-tea-appreciating snappers took you to?"

"Oh, it wasn't so bad, they seemed happy anyway, especially the eels. It was beautiful, the creatures were all dancing and singing and acting like one big family" I swallow the thought tugging at me that maybe she craves this happiness, this familial bond that any Victor loses with the thorny barrier of unexplainable memories between them and those they left behind, and tap her nose with my free hand.

"Oh? I hope you aren't planning on abandoning us and joining them?"

"You can come with me, you and Mags and Mother and, hm, maybe my pesky little brother if he promises to actually do as he's told for once. I could introduce you to the octopus, I think you'd like him" A dreamy haze fogs over the ocean of Annie's eyes as she gets lost in her imaginary world, and her teasing smile bursts into pure delight, a sun glimmering in the piercing light of stars tentatively peering from behind clouds. She takes my hand in both of hers. "Oh, Finn, wouldn't that be wonderful, living underwater forever? We could go down so deep no one would ever find us, and we could make a home out of old caves and have a garden of sea anenomoes and coral and a little picket fence of driftwood, and we'd wave good morning to the fish every day"

This is one of the moments I want to be in Annie's world, because the image she is creating is amazing, and I wish I could see it as a real entity, an actual wonderland that if we dove into the water would materialise from the clouds of white bubbles.

I look into her bright, hopeful eyes, which I can tell are probably seeing me surrounded by the wavering, midnight hue of water, the doorway behind us as the lip of a cave, the darkness of the deep an invitation to surprises rather than concealing horrors. I smile, feeling an odd sense of bliss run through me as I imagine us together in a beautiful, secret hideaway, far away from the problems of the District, from the Capitol and Snow and painted grabbing hands. I bend down to kiss her forehead, mumbling into her skin

"That would be heaven"

We're both helplessly caught in a web of limbs, grinning stupidly and staring into each other's eyes because we can't look away, lost in a world so precious it would shatter if it were exposed to the bitter air of our own, when Mags' warbling voice trills from the recesses of her house, something about how if we obviously aren't hungry for cake she'll eat it all herself, and we laugh.

"Better do as Mother says" Annie giggles. I rise and offer her my hand, and we rush into our second home.

...

As we sit round the elegantly carved wooden table, I am spellbound by the perfection of this moment. The familiar bolt of lightening setting my nerves on fire as the contours of mine and Annie's hands slot together in perfect harmony; the sweet scent of the finest cake the bakery provides causing my mouth to water in anticipation; the sound of laughter ringing through a house suffocated by the sorrowful murmur of ghosts; the pull greater than gravity which tugs us together: happiness coming from being an irrefutable part of a family linked by something which pulses stronger than blood, though it comes from the spilling of it.

In school they taught us how they build the structures which allow safe passage across the rivers and tributaries unknowingly and helplessly tugged into the barren wasteland between our District and our neighbours, and I remember a lesson where we had to build a bridge from blocks and nothing more. I spent ages puzzling, trying to cheat with glue and tape, looking like an idiot unable to solve this impossible puzzle, but in the end it was all so simple when the teacher showed us how the three pieces of soft driftwood tossed indiscriminately from the cold, torrid ocean, which could crumble under the slightest pressure, became sturdy and unbreakable when interlocked in perfect alignment.

I feel today the weight of the cement holding our bridge together as we three weathered souls soar above the streaming depths, never to be pulled back in.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>.<strong>

**I don't know if the bridge part made sense, but it's based on the fact that if you interlock pieces of a semi-circular bridge in the right way, you don't need glue or anything to keep them together.  
><strong>  
><strong>Also, my knowledge of fish largely comes from playing Animal Crossing, so I have no idea if snappers are indigenous to that part of the world or if they have the ability to bite, but whatever :P<strong>


	6. Drowning in fantasy

"I want to have your children, Finny"

The voice, deepened by the insistent tugs of seduction, silky from the alcohol which has caressed it, laboured under the weight of pleasure, flits through my mind like a shadow emerging and disappearing playfully through mist. I twist round and try to find it, to smother it like how the grey nothingness can embrace it in its icy folds, but it slips from my fingers whenever I grasp it, peering deviously round the corners of my conscious just when I think it's gone.

Its strange how one sentence, a fragment of thought hastily shoved into a form allowing it to survive in the open air, one vibration of a muscle which fades, swallowed by thick walls used to capturing secrets, can resonate within you for so long.

It's strange how of all the small sounds, familiar noises, giggled phrases and stories I heard last night, this one collection of words, threaded together by a barely coherent brain, were sewn to my mind, like a clumsy seamstress inadvertently spearing through an unblemished scrap of material with her needle.

It's strange how the moment those words fought past purple lips, shrugging off slippery lipstick, and latched themselves onto me, I knew they'd be there for a long time, like barnacles grasping the deceptively thick skin of whales on their lonely, endless wander across the bewildering ocean.

I wish I hadn't made such an effort to listen to her ramblings, slick with unadulterated bliss. It was only because of the threat Snow gave me after my first_ performance_ of the visit had been 'distracted'. It's hard to put on a show when I only feel half-there due to the gaping, aching hole in my chest, from which I am taunted by painfully clear-cut images of my Annie clinging to my legs so hard my bones clicked, and crying to try to drown the monsters which chase her, with a body so blinded by blood and deafened by the thuds and hindered slices of axes that the screams which escape do not know who they are for anymore.

She was bad when I left. It's my fault, I shouldn't have let her go there, should have been considerate and informed and known they were executing that thief in the square, I should have been there to drag her away, to cover her eyes and her ears and take her to the beach to be intoxicated by nature. Instead, what was I doing? Forcing the splintered spinning wheel in my head to churn out more lies and transform them into horrendously beautiful words, coated with deceptive paint the exact shade of my lips. In this case, I was giving an 'inspirational speech' to the eighteen-year-olds at the Training Complex ahead of the reaping, for which it was anticipated a few of them would volunteer.

What a despicable puppet I've become, to send innocent children to their deaths with a song about how lovely it'll be, while the woman I love, whom I'm supposed to protect, suffers kidnapped by cruel memories due to my negligence.

And now I've left her there in the district all alone again, so I can make stupid jokes at pointless parties and exchange meaningless touches in stranger's rooms, scraped by sharp fingernails in places I would otherwise only let Annie see. Mags reassured me that she and Annie's mother would look after her, but that just makes me feel worse, like my mistakes are gunfire tearing into everyone else, because they have enough troubles of their own without the extra burden, and she'll only respond properly to me.

Now every minute I spend here my mind is back there, willing to see her and know how she is doing, aching to reassure her and bring her out of the torment that reality will only be slightly preferable to.

I'm sorry, Annie. An apology taints my first breath of the morning, lurks behind every laugh. Sorrys writhe within me, puncturing my heart over and over when I'm with those women as their play-toy for the night, it's a thought I tattoo in my brain when life slips away as I lie there, exhausted and trembling. Sorry I've failed you, that I've abandoned you, that you're stuck with the lying, cheating excuse of a person I am and that you rely on me so much it hurts you when I'm not there.

Sitting on the plush, fuchsia window seat in a hotel room, my hands roughly mead my forehead, feeling the slowly developing crevices hewn by streams of anxiety, hoping the thoughts which plague me, like the papery grip of hundreds of leaves blown into me from all directions on a windy day, will disappear.

At first when I was _invited_ back for impromptu visits to the Capitol, the District Four escort, who took it upon herself to be my tour guide in the absence of tributes to brag about the wonders of her city to, dragged me to every museum, gallery, piece of ostentatious architecture and garden she could think of to occupy me. Although at the time I could think of nothing worse than spending the day adding to an already over-spilling bank vault of what our so generous capital city has, where in districts there are only holes, craters echoing with desperate prayers, now I'm seriously considering finding some way of contacting her to beg her to provide me with a distraction from myself: the whirlwind of Annie, Snow's threat, last night's client's words, the dread of who I must perform for tonight.

But something stops me. Maybe it's pride, or the knowledge that at least locked away in my room I don't have to face the baffled stares, push through bodies dead stiff at the sight of me, grin charmingly and try to avoid brushing my hand against whatever ridiculous, garish clothing barely covers a heaving bust as women ask me to sign my autograph on their skin with conveniently available pens from over-sized handbags.

I've never quite understood the awe evoked by seeing a celebrity in real life. They're just people, after all, who happen to have been on television. And rich Capitol citizens' surprise at chancing across them is unjustified, living in the city centre as they do, the rainbow rotary of souls captured within glass lenses, brought out to entertain the everyday lives of those ignorant of what their idols go through just to receive their applause, like animals gawked at in a zoo over a tailored commentary painting neon a story that was once monochrome.

It's even more perplexing how amazed my customers are at the sight of me when I stride into their fancy abodes, seeing as they requested my presence. In my experience the worst kind of shock is one which has dangled in between the bubbly mass of possibility and the sharp rocky incline of reality, only to be cut from its rope to tumble helplessly and be skewered on a knife point, icy with life. Like how, after a lifetime of waiting and two years of anticipation, my name was pulled out by a hand too delicate and meticulously adorned to hold that much power.

Sometimes I wonder whether, if I had known what was to be, things would have been different. I would not have told truths, shivering in their naked vulnerability in the stifling heat of a room saturated with tears, thinking that admissions needed to be released or else would be locked as tortured whispers inside the empty, blood-stained shell of my body as it lay (hopefully in one piece) in a wooden box.

I have always placed such emphasis on telling the truth, after being forced into a life where lies are the only protection my thin skin has against the creatures prowling this city, lusting to draw blood. But sometimes the truth is a liquid, forever changing and sliding from your grasp, which, when it meets the perfect mixture of gases mingled together in the harmony of air, becomes poisonous to whoever drinks it. I feel the prominence of this now as I remember last night: ragged, heavy breaths punctured the hot air; a hand - purposefully starved into a jumble of bones lightly coated with creamy translucent skin - left a trail of frazzled nerves and guilt as it glided across my palpitating heart; weary muscles stretched into a weak, empty smile whilst behind them something died as a hazy mind configured the meaning of the words thrust upon it.

My fans have the strangest, most disturbing fantasies. I guess as a result of a brain not being used for planning the acquisition of the next meal, they can allow themselves the luxury of fading away from the world. But this one is the most unsettling I've ever heard. The thought of sharing something so…sacred, so intimate, so precious, with some bejewelled creature whose only hold over me is exploiting me, invading me while I lie trapped in a net woven from threats and monetary notes, makes me shudder. Imagining my child with _her_ blonde hair and coating themselves in make-up to look just like their mother, a child who would grow to see the Hunger Games shining in lights as bright as their home, a child who would want for nothing yet want everything, defiles everything I have dreamed of, tarnishes my most valued thoughts, which float tentatively in a paper-thin bubble providing a filmy shield from the pollution of the outside world.

What makes it worse is how she doesn't view having children as this at all. In my district, children are the ultimate creation of deep love, a symbol of commitment, compassion, selflessness and, let's face it, bravery to put so much of oneself into the beautiful damned who could be torn away from you after twelve short years. But here, they're either the unwelcome consequence of a careless act of indulgence (as evidenced by the scarily bustling clinics and community homes, sagging with abandonment) or viewed as some kind of tool: leverage against an unfaithful lover, a promise of betrothal to the relative of a business partner to seal the deal, a primped doll to awkwardly manoeuvre into your own dreams, a custom live-in assistant.

Even the process can have nothing to do with love, since rich citizens rid themselves of the inconveniences of nature when they hit puberty (which incidentally I have to thank for why there aren't inadvertent miniature Finnicks running around) so when they want to have children the ingredients are extracted and mixed in a test tube, monitored and tinkered with to secure the best chances of success with no genetic imperfections, and matured in a lab until the parents, fresh and healthy, wander in at their convenience after nine months. Clinical, uninvolved, with none of the sacrifice that would prepare them for the shock of seeing the trouble and sleepless nights their creation causes their nanny.

There are times when I think I can stand these people, and then I discover something like this. Like the glasses of liquid, so dainty and shy perched atop a corner table at every party, thrust upon me too many times for the images of starving children, huddled in the streets of my district, to remain obediently quiet in my mind for much longer. Or the callous way people, the hazy film of indoctrination flaring in their eyes, can report their friends, to knowingly condemn them to unimaginable pain which scars the delicate skin of their eyes long after the other marks have faded; lifelong silence; a family of corpses, all because of one thoughtless word, an unhidden displeasure with the world, revealed under the deceptively warm canopy of trust.

But I'm driving myself mad musing over things that will never change: how I'm steadily drowning in a whirlpool of poisonous fantasies, tugged further away - choking on my own lies - from the gentle blue tint of truth lingering above me. I glance at the clock, wincing at how many hours have slithered from my grasp, grinning me farewell as they push me into the hands of fate. I know from experience that it doesn't end well to get lost in these thoughts too late before I have to leave to see a client. I have to get myself in a presentable state, piece the chipped, faded fragments of myself back together by remembering Annie and Mags and their families: everyone who I must protect. Like glue, their faces in my mind are smooth and reliable, gliding over the most fragile parts of me and freezing into a hard shell to protect me for so long as they can, but also a sticky mess which is impossible to get rid of and makes you change, rethink everything, even tiny household tasks.

I change into my approved clothing, black trousers, cut low to entice the band of my underwear to peek out, and a white button-up with only two buttons, which clings to every minute crevice like a sparse snowdrift suffocating the ridges of a mountain with it's icy, silencing touch. With each item, I feel myself grow more numb, the old Finnick scraped out, like soft, live pumpkin flesh torn from its shelter and replaced by a cheap, replaceable lump of wax, simply for meaningless enjoyment.

By the time I shove my feet into sleek, shiny black shoes, my muscles are primed for hollow smiles though they ache from overuse; mind emptied but for a bank of generic sweet nothings, so repeated they limp across my tongue listlessly; my body detached and flaccid, ready for orders.

This numbness is what has helped me to survive: to not feel the sickening ease my trident negotiated itself through the major organs of my victims; to maintain my camera face even when it almost gets knocked off by the ripple of horror pulsing through me at what I see, strengthen the cracks as I feel something inside myself shatter; to face the ones I love back home and not rupture their spirits with my pain. It's useful to use regularly, because I've learned from experience, from before I was able to envelop myself in delirious numbness, sweet self-induced morphling, that it takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.

As I walk out of my room with a purposeful stride which most will interpret as eager, and not see that terror and the determination to not run back the other way is the only thing forcing my feet forward, a delicious glimmer of what I have left behind flickers in my mind, before everything turns black at the sight of an opening door and a rush of overpowering perfume.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to have children, Finn?"

"Annie, I couldn't imagine anything better"


End file.
